Chapter 6 - THE DOCTOR WHO BURIED MY FATHER
The address led to a hospice facility forty minutes outside the city.
It did not belong to any Vale company.
That was the first good sign.
The second was the ambulance parked crookedly behind the building with its rear doors open.
Someone had arrived in a hurry.
The bad sign was everything else.
Luka did not want Sophie inside.
I did not want Sophie out of my sight.
We compromised by calling Ana.
She had left St. Catherine after being suspended for "unauthorized patient interference."
She arrived at the hospice wearing jeans, sneakers, and an expression that made it clear she had stopped caring about hospital politics.
"Give me the baby."
I hesitated.
Ana softened.
"I will sit in the car where you can see us through the window."
I kissed Sophie until she wrinkled her tiny nose.
"If anyone comes near you -"
"I drive."
"Even if it is police?"
"Especially if it is Margaret Vale wearing pearls."
I almost smiled.
Then I handed her my daughter.
Walking without Sophie felt wrong.
Walking at all felt worse.
My body had become one long ache.
Luka noticed and slowed his stride.
"You should be in bed."
"My father should be alive."
He did not argue.
The hospice receptionist looked terrified when I gave Joseph Mercer's name.
"He is not supposed to have visitors."
"He texted me."
"He does not have a phone."
Luka and I looked at each other.
"Who has access to him?" he asked.
"His court-appointed guardian."
"Name?"
The receptionist swallowed.
"Margaret Vale."
Of course.
I placed both hands on the counter.
"I am Dr. Andrew Bennett's daughter."
The woman's expression changed.
"Oh."
That single sound held recognition.
"You knew my father?"
"No."
"Then why did you react?"
She looked toward the security camera.
Then she leaned closer.
"Dr. Mercer says his name every night."
My heart began pounding.
"What does he say?"
"Mostly that he is sorry."
The elevator behind us opened.
A large man in a suit stepped out.
Luka shifted slightly in front of me.
The man looked at him, reconsidered whatever he had planned, and walked toward the exit.
Luka waited until the doors closed again.
"Room number."
The receptionist wrote 312 on a sticky note.
"Five minutes."
"Thank you."
"I did not give you anything."
We took the stairs.
Room 312 was at the end of a quiet hall.
A thin man lay propped against white pillows.
His hair was almost entirely gone.
A feeding tube entered his abdomen.
His skin looked translucent beneath the afternoon light.
But his eyes were awake.
Sharp.
Waiting.
"Claire."
My name came out as a scrape.
I stopped at the foot of the bed.
"How do you know me?"
He looked at Luka.
"You came too."
Luka's voice was cold.
"Disappointed?"
"Relieved."
Mercer coughed until the monitor beside him chirped.
I waited.
I had imagined confronting someone involved in my father's death would make me feel powerful.
Instead I felt twenty-five, exhausted, stitched, and terrified.
"Did you send the messages?"
Mercer shook his head.
"No phone."
"Then who did?"
"Andrew."
I stared at him.
"Do not do that."
"Automated trigger."
He swallowed.
"My monitor changed state when I woke."
Luka understood first.
"Andrew set a dead-man alert on Mercer's medical status."
Mercer nodded.
"He knew I might wake someday."
I moved closer.
"My father died eight years ago."
"Because he trusted the wrong man."
"You?"
Mercer closed his eyes.
"Yes."
Rage climbed my throat.
"Did you kill him?"
His eyes opened.
"No."
"Did Margaret?"
He looked toward the door.
"Not with her own hands."
My knees weakened.
Luka pulled a chair behind me.
I sat.
"Tell me everything."
Mercer looked at Luka again.
"Everything gets people killed."
"I am already on the list," Luka said.
A faint smile touched Mercer's mouth.
"You always were."
Luka's jaw flexed.
"Start with November seventeenth."
Mercer's smile vanished.
He stared at the ceiling.
"There was a storm."
His voice became distant.
"Two women delivered sons within fourteen minutes."
"Margaret Vale and Elena Moretti?" I asked.
He nodded.
"Charles Vale's son was born blue."
"He had severe respiratory failure."
"Margaret was hysterical."
"Charles was worse."
Luka stood completely still.
"The Moretti baby was healthy."
Mercer looked at him.
"Very healthy."
"What happened?"
Mercer's mouth trembled.
"Charles ordered an experimental treatment for his son."
"It was not approved."
"The infant had to be moved to a private research wing under another identifier."
"Why another identifier?"
"Because if he died, Charles did not want the death connected to the Vale name or the unauthorized protocol."
My skin crawled.
"So they used the Moretti baby's identity?"
Mercer shook his head.
"At first, only the chart."
"Then the bracelets were switched."
Luka's voice was flat.
Mercer looked at him.
"Yes."
"By you?"
"By a nurse following my order."
Luka took one step closer.
"You stole me."
Mercer's eyes filled with tears.
"I thought it would be for twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes became thirty-two years."
"I know."
"My mother raised another woman's son."
"I know."
"And Margaret raised hers."
Mercer shook his head slowly.
"Not exactly."
The room changed.
Luka's voice dropped.
"What does that mean?"
Mercer struggled for breath.
I reached for the water cup and held the straw to his mouth.
He drank.
Then he looked at me.
"The Vale infant survived the treatment."
My heart thudded.
"Then why did they not switch them back?"
Mercer laughed once, bitter and weak.
"Because by morning the healthy Moretti infant had already been photographed in Margaret Vale's arms."
"The press had announced the birth."
"Charles's father had released a trust amendment naming the newborn heir."
"And the sick child had been entered into an illegal trial under the Moretti identity."
He closed his eyes.
"Correcting the mistake would have exposed all of it."
Luka stared at him.
"So you sent the Vale baby home with the Moretti family."
Mercer whispered, "Yes."
The air left my lungs.
Luka turned away.
His shoulders rose once.
Then again.
He did not cry.
That was somehow worse.
"Did Elena Moretti know?" I asked.
"No."
"Did Marco?"
"No."
"Did Margaret?"
Mercer looked at me.
"Every second."
My stomach turned.
"And Charles?"
"He told himself it was temporary until it became useful."
Luka turned back.
"Useful how?"
Mercer looked at him with naked shame.
"The child raised as Ethan was healthy, photogenic, and already attached to the Vale inheritance."
"The child raised as Luka was proof of an illegal medical experiment."
Luka's voice went quiet.
"So I was easier to lose."
Mercer did not answer.
He did not need to.
I thought of Luka's tattoos.
The rumors my father mentioned.
The Moretti name he had carried as both identity and evidence.
"What does M-17 stand for?"
Mercer's breathing changed.
"Moretti."
"Seventeenth of November."
"It became the archive label Andrew used after he found the discrepancy."
I leaned forward.
"When did my father find it?"
"Twenty years later."
"He was running an audit of neonatal blood cards after a lab merger."
"He saw that Ethan Vale's blood type could not match the historic Vale records."
"Then he found the original paper trail."
"Why did he not go to police?"
Mercer gave me a devastated look.
"Because I begged him not to."
The confession hit me harder than I expected.
"You protected yourself."
"Yes."
"And he listened?"
"For a while."
Mercer coughed.
"Then he met Luka."
I looked at the man beside me.
"Why?"
Mercer answered.
"Because Andrew wanted to compare Luka's blood to Charles Vale's archived sample."
"Did he?"
Mercer closed his eyes.
"Yes."
Luka stepped closer.
"What was the result?"
Mercer looked at him.
"You already know."
"Say it."
Mercer swallowed.
"Charles Vale was your biological father."
Luka did not move.
For several seconds, none of us did.
Then he asked, "Did Charles know?"
Mercer nodded.
"Andrew confronted him."
"When?"
"Six days before Andrew died."
My heart stopped.
The security image.
My father.
Luka.
Charles Vale.
"Charles was alive."
Mercer looked at me.
"Yes."
"But his funeral was two years earlier."
"A staged death."
"Why?"
"Cancer."
"Tax investigations."
"The trial records."
"He wanted to disappear before everything surfaced."
I could barely process it.
"Did Charles kill my father?"
Mercer shook his head.
"No."
"Who did?"
Mercer's eyes moved toward the window.
Ana sat in the car below with Sophie.
A dark sedan had pulled in behind her.
Luka saw it too.
He reached for his phone.
"Ana, leave now."
The sedan doors opened.
Two men stepped out.
Ana's car reversed before they reached her.
She shot out of the parking lot.
The men looked up at our window.
Mercer began trembling.
"They found me."
"Who?" I demanded.
"Not Margaret."
"Then who?"
Mercer grabbed my wrist with surprising strength.
"Your husband knows more than you think."
My heart lurched.
"Ethan?"
"He came here."
"When?"
"Three months ago."
"Why?"
Mercer looked at Luka.
"He wanted the original DNA result destroyed."
Luka's face hardened.
"Did you destroy it?"
"No."
"Where is it?"
Mercer released me and pointed weakly toward the drawer beside his bed.
I opened it.
Empty.
Mercer went white.
"It was there."
The door alarm sounded in the hallway.
Luka locked the room.
"Who had access?"
Mercer stared at the empty drawer.
"My guardian."
"Margaret?"
He shook his head.
"She appointed a co-guardian last week."
"Who?"
Mercer looked at me.
"Ethan Vale."
Footsteps thundered toward the room.
Then my phone lit up with a video message from Ethan.
The preview showed him sitting in his car.
He held a sealed DNA envelope in one hand.
Across the front, in my father's handwriting, were three words.
May you like
LUKA MORETTI - PATERNITY.
