CHAPTER 10: THE PRICE OF TRUST
Claire Mercer was arrested at the hospital.
She denied poisoning Richard.
“I changed his medication exactly as prescribed,” she insisted. “Thomas recommended the specialist, not me.”
Investigators searched her apartment and found bottles containing the same toxic compound detected in Richard’s blood.
The evidence appeared overwhelming.
Emma did not believe it.
Thomas was too careful to leave proof in his sister’s home unless he wanted it found.
Richard remained unconscious for two days.
During that time, Emma took temporary control of his company.
Board members who had known her since childhood questioned whether she was emotionally prepared.
One director suggested that she step aside until the scandal ended.
Emma placed the transaction ledger in front of him.
“The scandal will end when the truth is exposed,” she said. “Not when I become silent.”
She ordered an independent audit of every company Thomas had managed.
The auditors uncovered hundreds of hidden transfers, but one discovery disturbed Emma more than the others.
Thomas had been paying a private psychiatric clinic for seven years.
The patient was registered under a false name.
The clinic was located in northern Wisconsin.
Emma and Detective Ortiz traveled there under federal protection.
The facility director initially refused to cooperate. When presented with a warrant, she led them into a secure wing.
Inside Room 12 sat a silver-haired woman staring through a barred window.
Emma froze.
She knew that face.
It had appeared in photographs throughout her childhood.
“Mom?”
The woman turned slowly.
Eleanor Whitmore had supposedly died eighteen years earlier in a boating accident.
Yet she was alive.
Thin.
Medicated.
And locked inside a private clinic.
Emma’s legs nearly gave way.
Eleanor studied her daughter with confused eyes.
Then recognition broke through the haze.
“Emma?”
Emma crossed the room and dropped to her knees beside her.
Her mother touched her face.
“You grew up.”
Emma began to cry.
Not from weakness.
Not from fear.
From the unbearable weight of recovering something she had mourned for most of her life.
Detective Ortiz questioned the clinic director.
Thomas had admitted Eleanor under court orders claiming that she was violent and delusional. The documents bore Richard’s signature.
Emma refused to believe her father had signed them willingly.
When Richard regained consciousness, she showed him Eleanor’s photograph.
His face crumpled.
“She’s alive?”
“You didn’t know?”
Richard shook his head.
He explained that after the boating accident, Thomas had identified Eleanor’s body because Richard had been hospitalized with injuries.
The coffin had remained closed.
Thomas had handled every detail.
“Why would he do this?” Emma asked.
Richard stared at the ceiling.
“Because your mother discovered he was stealing from the company.”
Eleanor had planned to expose him.
Thomas staged the accident, imprisoned her, and convinced everyone she was dead.
But he had kept her alive for one reason.
Eleanor knew where Richard’s original ownership documents were hidden.
Documents proving Thomas had never been a legitimate partner in the company.
That night, a nurse entered Eleanor’s room and found her bed empty.
Someone had taken her less than six hours after Emma discovered she was alive.
May you like
On the pillow lay another message.
Bring me the fifty million, or you will bury your mother twice.
