Chapter 7 - THE NIGHT BEFORE MY FATHER DIED
WORD COUNT: 1,000+ WORDS
Martin did not try to leave.
That frightened me more than if he had.
He stood beneath the fluorescent basement lights, shoulders lowered, looking older than I had ever seen him.
“Start talking.”
“Your father called me that night.”
“What night?”
“The night before his accident.”
“You told me you hadn’t spoken to him for three days.”
“I lied.”
The word landed cleanly.
No excuse attached.
I moved away from him.
Every person I trusted seemed to be turning into somebody else.
“Why?”
“Because your father made me promise.”
“My father was dead the next morning.”
“I know.”
“Then his promise should have died with him.”
Martin flinched.
For the first time, anger broke through his careful expression.
“You think I haven’t told myself that every day for eighteen months?”
I stared at him.
“Tell me what happened.”
Martin sat.
At 10:53 p.m. the night before my father died, Thomas Ellison had called him from a prepaid phone.
He sounded frightened.
Not panicked.
My father never panicked.
But frightened.
He told Martin not to come through the main gate.
He told him to park two streets away.
When Martin arrived, Dad had already disabled the exterior security system.
“He had papers on the dining room table,” Martin said. “The DNA report was there.”
“The one showing Daniel was his son?”
“Yes.”
“And Daniel knew?”
“Your father believed so.”
“How?”
“Because the laboratory had released a certified duplicate three months earlier.”
“To whom?”
Martin looked at me.
“Daniel.”
The room seemed to shrink.
Apparently, years earlier, my father had submitted his own DNA sample through attorneys after Patricia repeatedly refused to cooperate. Daniel had later provided a sample through an intermediary.
The lab found a parent-child match.
But before my father could approach him directly, Daniel requested his own certified copy.
“He signed for it?”
“Yes.”
“So there’s no possibility he didn’t know.”
“No.”
I gripped the edge of the table.
Three months.
Three months before my father died, Daniel knew Thomas Ellison was his biological father.
And he continued dating me.
“Why didn’t Dad tell me?”
“He was trying to determine why Daniel had approached you in the first place.”
My eyes narrowed.
“Approached me?”
Martin hesitated.
“You believed you met Daniel accidentally at the museum fundraiser.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t.”
Dad’s investigator had found emails between Patricia and an event coordinator.
Patricia had paid for Daniel to be placed at my table.
My relationship had been arranged before I knew it existed.
Martin continued.
“Your father believed Patricia wanted access to something.”
“Harbor Street.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“That was the part he hadn’t solved.”
The night before Dad died, he gave Martin a sealed evidence package.
He told him if anything happened, Martin was to place it in a bank vault and say nothing until someone named Mercer made a direct attempt to seize company authority.
“Why didn’t canceling the wedding qualify earlier?”
“Because until this morning, Daniel hadn’t made a documented attempt.”
I thought of the authorization papers in his briefcase.
“And now?”
“Now he has.”
“What happened after you took the package?”
Martin swallowed.
“Your father asked me to leave through the rear service road.”
“What time?”
“11:37.”
“Daniel said 11:40.”
“Close enough.”
“And the footage?”
“I erased my own visit.”
“Why?”
“Because your father told me to.”
I stared at him.
“Why would he do that?”
“He said, ‘If they know Martin has been here, they’ll know where I moved the documents.’”
They.
Not she.
Not Patricia.
They.
“How many people was Dad afraid of?”
“I don’t know.”
Martin stood.
“There’s more.”
Of course there was.
The evidence package wasn’t in his office.
It wasn’t in his home.
It was stored in a private vault at Halston National Bank.
My father had chosen the bank because none of Ellison Maritime’s corporate accounts were there.
“Then let’s go.”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“Then we wake someone up.”
Martin gave me a tired look.
“You really are Thomas’s daughter.”
Twenty minutes later, while we prepared to leave Harbor Street, building security called.
A vehicle had been idling in the alley behind us.
Black SUV.
No plates visible.
The same model appearing in my father’s investigation photographs.
I felt fear then.
Real fear.
Not emotional fear.
Physical.
Immediate.
The kind that changed how you heard footsteps.
Martin called police.
The SUV disappeared before officers arrived.
We stayed inside.
At 1:15 a.m., Daniel sent another message.
YOU’RE DIGGING INTO THINGS YOUR FATHER WANTED BURIED.
I replied for the first time.
DID HE WANT THEM BURIED, OR DID YOU?
Daniel answered almost immediately.
ASK YOURSELF WHY THOMAS NEVER TOLD YOU WHO I WAS.
I stared at the screen.
Then another message arrived.
MAYBE HE WASN’T PROTECTING YOU.
MAYBE HE WAS PROTECTING HIMSELF.
I refused to respond.
At 7:30 the next morning, Martin and I entered Halston National Bank with two police officers waiting outside.
The vault required Martin’s key and my identification.
Inside deposit box 814 were four things.
A flash drive.
A handwritten ledger.
A sealed DNA report.
And another letter from Dad.
The DNA report ended any remaining doubt.
Probability of biological paternity:
99.9987%.
Thomas Ellison was Daniel Mercer’s father.
My father.
Daniel’s father.
I pushed the report away.
Martin opened the ledger.
Most entries were meaningless to me at first.
Dates.
Initials.
Dollar amounts.
Ship names.
Then Martin found a repeated set of letters.
PM.
Patricia Mercer.
Beside her initials were transfers totaling nearly twelve million dollars over fourteen years.
“What was she doing?”
Martin kept reading.
“She wasn’t just involved with your father.”
The ledger showed Patricia had once worked indirectly for Ellison Maritime through a consulting firm.
Long before I knew her.
Long before Daniel entered my life.
Dad had discovered irregularities in maritime insurance payments.
Falsified accident reports.
Employee settlements routed through shell companies.
Patricia’s name appeared beside many of them.
Then I saw one date.
October 16.
Eighteen months earlier.
The day my father died.
Beside that date, Dad had written:
P.M. KNOWS ABOUT LANTERN.
Below it:
D.M. REQUESTED ACCESS.
M.H. SECURE EVERYTHING.
Martin stared.
“What is Lantern?”
I shook my head.
The flash drive answered.
A folder appeared when we connected it to Martin’s offline laptop.
PROJECT LANTERN.
Inside were recordings.
Photographs.
Financial records.
And one video file dated two nights before my father’s death.
We opened it.
The footage came from my father’s private home office.
Patricia Mercer stood in front of his desk.
She looked furious.
My father stood behind it.
“You brought him into Claire’s life,” he said.
Patricia folded her arms.
“You brought him into mine.”
“He is my son. That doesn’t give you the right to manipulate either of them.”
“He deserved what Claire had.”
“He deserved the truth.”
“He deserved your name.”
My father’s face tightened.
“You kept him from me for twenty years.”
“And now you want to act like a father?”
“I want you away from my daughter.”
Patricia laughed.
“Which one?”
Dad went still.
I felt my own body do the same.
Martin leaned closer to the screen.
Patricia smiled.
Then she said something I would remember for the rest of my life.
“You still haven’t told Claire the worst part, have you?”
My father’s voice dropped.
“Get out.”
“The truth about Daniel will destroy her.”
“Patricia.”
“But the truth about her mother?”
My heart stopped.
Patricia stepped closer.
“That will destroy everything.”
The recording ended.
I stared at the black screen.
Martin whispered, “Claire…”
But I was already opening the next file.
May you like
Because suddenly Daniel was no longer the only secret my father had taken to his grave.
My mother was part of it too.
