Chapter 14 #2
"If other people still remembered them," I said, "why didn't anyone take me in?"
No one answered.
Because the honest answer was too terrifying.
Because someone had profited from the Hale heiress growing up as nobody's child.
Graham's phone vibrated again. Andrew was still talking off to the side, but he turned quickly. Graham read the message. His expression changed almost imperceptibly, but I had already learned to detect those microscopic shifts. Bad news.
"What is it?"
"They found Tamara Keys," he said.
"Where?"
"In the Hudson Valley. A small house in her name. The neighbors say she lives alone. Two men visited her this afternoon."
"The Mercers?"
"We don't know yet."
"Is she alive?"
He was silent one second too long.
"Graham."
"The house is on fire."
At first, I couldn't understand. My mind refused to absorb the whole sentence.
The house is on fire. Tamara Keys. The woman from my possible childhood.
The woman who remembered too much. The person the message might have been addressing: *How much longer will you remain silent? * The house is on fire.
I sat up so abruptly that Irene cried out.
"I have to go there."
"No," Graham said.
"She could die!"
"Our people are already on their way."
"Your people don't know her! She might remember me!"
"Which is exactly why you're not going."
"Have you lost your mind?"
I snapped. My voice cracked, and pain slashed across my lower abdomen, but I couldn't stop.
"This woman knows my parents! My life! She may be the only person who remembers that I wasn't an orphan! And you're telling me to lie here and breathe?"
Graham rolled closer, and for the first time anger flared in his eyes—living anger, not cold.
"I'm telling you not to let the Mercers eliminate two heiresses in a single week!"
I froze.
Two.
My child and me.
The words struck so precisely that I fell silent.
Irene immediately put a hand on my shoulder and forced me back down, and this time I didn't resist. Not because I had surrendered.
Because my abdomen pulled again, sharply and frighteningly, reminding me that any attempt to run into the fire could become a gift to the people who had lit it.
"I hate this," I whispered.
"Me?" Graham asked.
"Everyone. Myself. Them. This body that can't simply stand up and go."
"Two days ago, your body pulled you and your child out of the water. Show it some respect."
I closed my eyes. The tears escaped anyway, hot and furious. I hated that he was right again. I hated this hard, inconvenient truth that refused to let me die heroically and for nothing.
Andrew returned several minutes later, his face set in stone.
"Our people are there. So are the firefighters. The fire started at the back of the house. They got Tamara out. She's alive."
I clapped a hand over my mouth.
Alive.
For one second, the world became almost bearable.
"Her condition?" Irene asked.
"Smoke inhalation. Burns on her hands. She's disoriented, but she said one word."
"What word?"
I could barely breathe.
Andrew looked at me.
"Lana, sweetheart."
I began to cry.
Not beautifully. Not quietly. Not the way strong heroines cry so they won't ruin their faces.
I folded in on myself, and Irene no longer scolded me.
She only held my shoulders while I sobbed as though that single voice from my past, speaking through smoke and burns, had returned not merely my name but proof: I had been loved before Adrian.
Before the group home. Before all their medical reports.
Before someone else's last name. Someone had called me sweetheart when I still didn't know the world could sell children along with their inheritances.
"She remembers me," I gasped.
"She remembers."
Graham said nothing.
Andrew turned away.
Irene said softly:
"Then you aren't crazy."
I almost laughed through my tears.
"What a comforting diagnosis."
"The best one available."
They decided not to take Tamara to a regular hospital.
Graham didn't even allow a discussion. If someone had found her and set her house on fire, any official hospital room could become a clear path for the Mercers' people.
She was coming here. To the house that, over the past few days, had transformed from an accidental refuge into a strange fortress for everyone the Mercers hadn't managed to crush.
Kyle in the next room. Tamara on her way.
Me downstairs with a child they had already tried to turn into a legal object.
Graham in his chair, with the defenses forming around him.
And somewhere out there, Adrian was probably beginning to understand that witnesses didn't disappear as quickly as he'd been promised.
Tamara arrived an hour later.
I wasn't supposed to get up. Irene told me that about six times.
The seventh time, I gave her a look that made her swear and order someone to bring me out in a wheelchair, at least. They wrapped me in a blanket and wheeled me into the guesthouse corridor, which already smelled of smoke, iodine, and wet wool.
Tamara was carried in on a stretcher. A small, thin woman with gray hair, soot covering her face, and both hands bandaged.
She was twenty years older than my blurred memory of her, but when she opened her eyes, I recognized her instantly.
Not by her face. By her gaze. It was the way someone looked at a child she had lost, buried, searched for in dreams, and suddenly found alive.
"Lana, sweetheart," she whispered.
I reached out, forgetting everything. She tried to lift her bandaged fingers and couldn't, so I covered her hand with mine. Her skin was dry. Hot. Alive.
"You knew me?" I asked, my voice shaking. "You knew my parents?"
Tamara began to cry, quietly, without strength.
"I raised you, my sweet girl. Until you were twelve... I was with you every day. And then they told me you were dead."
I didn't understand.
"What?"
She started coughing. Irene bent over her sharply, but Tamara locked her eyes on me as though she were afraid that if she stopped talking, they would drag her back into the darkness.
"After the crash... they told me you died in the hospital.
They showed me papers. A grave... empty, probably.
God, I was an old fool... I believed them.
Then, years later, I saw you in a magazine beside Mercer.
All grown up. I knew you were alive. I wanted to come to you.
But they threatened me. Said if I opened my mouth, they would burn everything that remained of the Hales. "
My ears rang.
"Who?"
Tamara closed her eyes. A tear slipped from beneath her lashes, carving a pale trail through the soot.
"Vivian Mercer."
The name didn't sound like an answer.
It sounded like a sentence.
Graham sat beside us in his chair without saying a word. Andrew swore softly. Irene was checking Tamara's pulse, but her hand trembled.
"She took you," Tamara whispered. "Not right away.
Through guardianship, through people she controlled.
They said it had to be done, that the assets were protected, that the girl would be hidden for her own safety.
And then you disappeared. I searched for you.
They told me no such girl existed. That Lana Hale was dead.
When I saw you as Lana Mercer... I understood why. "
I began to shake. Not on the outside, but within, as though my bones had decided to crumble into dust.
"Why?" I asked, though I already knew.
Tamara looked at me, and there was so much guilt in her eyes that I ached for both of us.
"The foundation. The land. The shares. Everything was supposed to pass to you when you turned thirty. But with a husband, a guardianship order, a trust under their management... they could keep control of it all."
I closed my eyes.
Thirty.
I was twenty-nine.
They weren't rushing merely because of the divorce, Nikki, or the baby.
They were rushing because I was only months away from my thirtieth birthday.
And in that moment, everything fell into place so horribly that even the pain disappeared.
My marriage. The diagnosis. The control.
The divorce. Nikki. The yacht. The life jacket.
My “death.” The archive. My child. None of it had been a chain of accidents.
It was a single long road down which they had led me toward a moment when I would either sign away my rights or disappear.
"Lana," Graham said quietly.
I opened my eyes.
"How long until your birthday?"
I looked at him. Then at Tamara. Then at my hand resting over my stomach.
"Two months," I said.
Tamara sobbed.
Graham nodded slowly, as though he had received the final missing piece of the map.
Then Andrew's phone vibrated.
He read the message and went pale.
"What is it?" I asked.
He looked up.
"Adrian filed an emergency petition with the court. He wants you declared legally incapacitated until your thirtieth birthday."
I didn't scream.
I didn't cry.
I didn't fall.
I only placed my palm on my stomach and suddenly felt something more terrifying than fear rise inside me.
Calm.
"Then," I said, looking at Graham, "we have two months to bury the Mercers before they bury me."