Chapter 4 - My Father Lied
Dominic read the note twice before crushing it in his fist.
Grace reached for Hannah.
"Hanna."
Hannah lifted the child and held her so tightly that Grace made a small protesting sound.
"Sorry."
Dominic checked the closet, the windows, and the bathroom even though three armed guards were already doing the same thing.
His control had finally cracked.
"Who was in this room?"
Sofia, the girls' nanny, stood near the doorway with tears streaming down her face.
"I was downstairs getting bottles."
"For six minutes?"
"Yes."
"Who told you to go?"
"No one."
Dominic stepped closer.
Sofia backed against the wall.
"Dominic."
Hannah's voice stopped him.
He looked at her.
"She's terrified."
"Good."
"That doesn't mean she's guilty."
"Someone entered my daughter's room."
"And if you scare the innocent people badly enough, the guilty one gets to watch you destroy your own house."
Luca glanced at Hannah with a brief look of approval.
Dominic did not.
For a long moment, Hannah thought he might tell her to stay out of it.
Then he stepped away from Sofia.
"Luca, separate everyone and take statements."
"Already started."
"Nobody leaves."
"Understood."
Hannah carried Grace to the rocking chair.
The little girl curled against her and immediately began to calm.
Lily and Emma woke and started calling Hannah's name in their uneven toddler voices.
Dominic stared at them as if every new word were both miracle and accusation.
By dawn, the townhouse had been searched twice.
The bitter substance in Hannah's tea tested positive for a strong prescription sedative.
A partial bloody fingerprint from the broken mug did not match anyone in the house.
The masked intruder had entered through a service tunnel connecting the basement to a neighboring property under renovation.
Only four people outside Dominic's security team knew the tunnel existed.
One of them was Matteo Vale.
Another had been Elena.
At seven in the morning, Luca entered the breakfast room carrying a plastic evidence bag.
Inside was a brass key.
"Found this sewn into the lining of Thomas Mercer's old coat."
Hannah stared at it.
"My father's coat?"
"Your security team brought the remaining personal items from your apartment."
Dominic handed her the bag.
A small paper tag was attached to the key.
BAY 418.
"What is that?"
Luca opened his tablet.
"There is a private storage facility in Long Island City called Harbor Bay Storage."
Hannah looked at him.
"Bay 418."
"Exactly."
Dominic was already standing.
"We go now."
Hannah looked toward the nursery.
"The girls?"
"Stay here."
"With a house full of suspects?"
Dominic stopped.
She saw the answer hit him.
Nowhere felt safe.
"Rosa comes with us and the girls come too."
Luca shook his head.
"Moving three children creates exposure."
"Leaving them where someone reached Grace creates more."
Hannah stood.
"Take them somewhere nobody on your staff knows about."
Dominic looked at her.
"Do you have a secret fortress I haven't heard about?"
"No, but I have a friend in Queens with two kids and a husband who thinks organized crime means forgetting to pay a parking ticket."
"Absolutely not."
"Then stop asking questions you don't want answered."
Despite everything, Luca coughed into his hand to hide a laugh.
Dominic glared at him.
Thirty minutes later, the triplets were moved to a pediatric safe suite inside a private medical building controlled by one of Dominic's legitimate companies.
Only Dominic, Luca, Rosa, and Hannah knew the room number.
Sofia remained under supervision at the townhouse.
The storage facility smelled like dust, metal, and old cardboard.
Bay 418 was on the fourth floor behind a roll-up steel door.
Hannah inserted the brass key.
It fit.
Her hand shook as she turned it.
Inside were six plastic bins, an old desk, a locked filing cabinet, and a folding chair.
Nothing had been disturbed.
Dominic examined the ceiling corners.
"No cameras."
Luca checked the lock.
"No signs anyone else has been here recently."
Hannah approached the nearest bin.
THOMAS MERCER - PERSONAL was written across the lid in her father's block handwriting.
She opened it.
The smell of paper and cedar hit her.
Inside were family photographs, insurance policies, and notebooks filled with numbers.
Hannah pulled out a photo album.
The first page held a picture of her parents outside a Brooklyn hospital.
Her mother, Catherine, looked exhausted and happy.
Her father had one arm around her.
Catherine held a newborn wrapped in a pink blanket.
Hannah stared at the date written beneath it.
June 14, 2000.
Her birthday.
She turned the page.
Another photograph had been removed, leaving four torn corners beneath the plastic film.
On the back of the page, her father had written one word.
Helena.
Hannah sat on the folding chair.
"He knew."
Dominic said nothing.
"My father knew the whole time."
Anger arrived before grief.
It burned through her chest.
"He watched me grow up alone."
"You weren't alone."
Hannah looked at him.
"I asked him when I was twelve why I didn't have brothers or sisters."
Her voice rose.
"He looked me in the eye and said my mother could only have one child."
Dominic crouched beside the filing cabinet.
"There may have been a reason."
"There is always a reason when adults lie to children."
She shoved the album aside.
"That doesn't make it a good one."
Luca opened another bin.
"You should see this."
Inside were hospital documents sealed in plastic sleeves.
Two certificates of live birth sat on top.
The first listed Hannah Catherine Mercer.
The second listed Helena Rose Mercer.
Same parents.
Same hospital.
Same date.
Birth times seven minutes apart.
Hannah touched Helena's certificate with one fingertip.
"She was real."
Dominic's voice was quiet.
"Yes."
Beneath the certificates was a document from a private adoption agency that had closed twenty years earlier.
It showed Helena Mercer placed with Anthony and Maria Rossi forty-eight hours after birth.
Hannah frowned.
"My parents never mentioned adoption."
Luca took the page.
"This doesn't look legal."
"Why?"
"No surrender signature from Catherine Mercer."
Dominic pointed to the bottom.
"Thomas signed."
Hannah stared at her father's signature.
It was unmistakable.
A sound escaped her that was almost a laugh.
"He gave her away."
"Maybe."
"His name is right there."
Dominic pulled another page free.
"So is someone else's."
Hannah looked.
A witness signature appeared below Thomas's.
Dr. Samuel Kline.
Luca searched the name.
"Obstetrician."
"At the hospital?"
"Yes."
"Still alive?"
Luca scrolled.
"Retired twelve years ago."
Dominic lifted a bank receipt from the file.
"Look at this."
The receipt documented a cash deposit of one hundred thousand dollars into an account belonging to Thomas Mercer three days after the twins were born.
Hannah's face burned with shame that did not belong to her.
"He sold her."
"Don't decide that yet."
"What else am I supposed to think?"
Dominic turned the receipt over.
On the back, Thomas had written something in red ink.
NOT PAYMENT.
RANSOM RETURNED.
ASK KLINE WHO SENT V.V.
Luca's eyes lifted to Dominic.
Hannah looked between them.
"What?"
Dominic's face had gone perfectly still.
"V.V."
"Who is V.V.?"
He did not answer immediately.
Hannah stood.
"Dominic."
"Victor Vale."
"Who is that?"
"My father."
The storage unit suddenly felt too small.
"Your father paid mine?"
"It looks that way."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"Was he involved in the adoption?"
"I don't know."
"You're saying that a Vale took my sister twenty-six years ago, and she somehow grew up and married another Vale?"
Dominic's expression darkened.
"I'm aware of how that sounds."
"It sounds planned."
"I met Elena when I was thirty."
"And your father?"
"Dead three years before that."
Hannah exhaled shakily.
"So he couldn't have arranged your marriage."
"No."
Luca had gone still beside the desk.
"Dominic."
"What?"
"That's not the only reference to Victor."
He pulled a ledger from the second bin.
Several pages contained initials, dates, and amounts.
The entries began in 2000 and continued for more than two decades.
V.V. appeared repeatedly until Victor's reported death.
Then another set of initials took over.
M.V.
Hannah did not need to ask.
"Matteo Vale."
Dominic nodded once.
Luca flipped to the final page.
The last entry was dated two months earlier.
M.V. - Mercer surveillance renewed - 25,000.
Hannah gripped the edge of the desk.
"Two months ago?"
"Yes."
"My father was already dead."
"The surveillance wasn't on him."
Luca turned the ledger toward her.
A name was written beneath the payment.
HANNAH MERCER.
Her knees nearly failed again.
Dominic caught her elbow.
She pulled away.
"Don't."
"Hannah—"
"Your family has been watching me."
"I didn't know."
"Your uncle paid someone to watch me."
"Yes."
"Your father appears in the paperwork that took my sister."
"Yes."
"And your wife, who looked exactly like me, died while searching for me."
Dominic did not deny it.
Hannah backed toward the open storage door.
"I need air."
Luca's phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed immediately.
"When?"
Dominic turned.
"What happened?"
Luca listened for another second.
"Lock the building down."
He ended the call.
"The medical safe suite was breached."
Hannah's heart stopped.
"The girls?"
"They're safe."
Dominic was already moving.
"What was taken?"
Luca looked at him.
"Nothing."
"Then what?"
"Someone left an envelope in Grace's room."
"For who?"
Luca's eyes shifted to Hannah.
"For her."
Inside the envelope was an old cassette tape.
On the label, in Thomas Mercer's handwriting, were five words.
HANNAH - WHEN ELENA FINDS YOU.
Inside the storage unit, Hannah found a small paper bag beneath Thomas's desk.
Inside were two birthday cards that had never been mailed.
Both were addressed to Helena.
The first was for her eighteenth birthday.
The second was for her twenty-first.
Hannah opened the older card with shaking fingers.
Thomas had written only a few lines.
"I have no right to call myself your father where you can hear it."
"I still think it every day."
Hannah stopped reading.
Dominic looked away to give her privacy.
She opened the second card.
"You are twenty-one today."
"Your sister is twenty-one too."
"I wonder whether you both laugh the same way."
Hannah pressed the card against her chest.
"He bought these and never sent them."
Dominic answered quietly.
"Fear again."
"Cowardice."
"Maybe both."
Hannah looked at him sharply.
"You defend him a lot for someone who never met him."
"I recognize men who convince themselves that silence protects their family."
The answer made her pause.
Dominic picked up one of Thomas's notebooks.
"I have done it too."
"With Elena?"
"With everyone."
Hannah sat on the floor beside the boxes.
"Did it work?"
Dominic looked around at the evidence connecting his family to a stolen baby, a dead wife who might not be dead, and a hidden surveillance operation.
"No."
The simplicity of the answer stayed with Hannah.
May you like
Later, when she slipped the unsent birthday cards into her coat, she did not know whether she was preserving evidence or forgiving Thomas by one small degree.
She only knew that if Elena was alive, those cards belonged to her.
