Chapter 20
I returned to my parents' house pregnant, with a microphone under my dress and Graham's men hidden in the dark garden.
Vivian Mercer had ordered me to come alone. I obeyed exactly as much as I considered necessary. Irene and Andrew rode with me. Two nondescript cars followed behind us. The lead detective was waiting for my signal. Langston sat in the mobile command center. Graham was supposed to stay in the car.
Of course he didn't.
"You promised you wouldn't go in without my signal," I said when I spotted his wheelchair on the rain-slick path.
"I'm not going in. I'm rolling along a public road."
"Through locked gates?"
"They weren't locked very well."
Even here, he managed to be insufferable, and it steadied me better than any sedative could have. If I could still get angry at him, I hadn't dissolved into fear yet.
The house stood beyond a line of black trees, large and dark, with white columns and tall windows.
I remembered it not with my eyes but with my skin.
My hand settled on the cold railing of its own accord.
My fingers found a nick beneath the paint.
Laughter flared in my mind. Mine. My mother's.
My father's fond grumbling: "Lana, sweetheart, don't slide down the banister. "
The sound of his voice folded me in half. Not metaphorically. Physically. I clutched the railing and pressed my palm to my stomach.
"Lana." Graham's voice came through my earpiece.
"Answer me."
"I'm here."
"Pain?"
"A memory."
"That's not an answer a doctor can use."
"Irene can hear me."
"I can," she said from the car.
"And I hate you both."
"The feeling is mutual," I said, and straightened.
The door opened before I could knock.
Vivian Mercer stood in the foyer beneath an enormous chandelier.
She wore the same black dress she'd worn while burying me in front of the cameras.
Her hair was immaculate, her spine straight, a serene half smile on her lips.
She was welcoming me into my own home as though I had once again arrived at hers uninvited.
"So you came after all," she said.
"This is my house. It's strange to hear a guest tell me I've arrived."
Her smile faltered.
"For now, the house belongs to the company."
"A company you controlled through shell entities. Langston has already found the documents. You shouldn't have assumed I'd come here without a lawyer in my ear."
"And Lawson hiding in the bushes."
"He's bad at hiding in bushes. The wheels give him away."
Graham swore softly in my earpiece. I almost smiled.
"Why did you call me here?"
"I wanted to talk without men present. They've ruined too much for both of us."
"Your son ruined three years of my life. You ruined eighteen. Don't split the credit with him."
She walked deeper into the house. I followed. The hardwood creaked beneath my feet. Pale rectangles marked the walls where paintings had been removed. Vivian Mercer had managed to strip away everything of value except my memories. Those, they had left to gather dust in the empty rooms.
We entered the nursery.
A small bed stood against the wall. A faded ribbon hung from its headboard. In the corner lay a teddy bear missing one eye. I recognized him. Not because I remembered him. Because I had once loved him.
Vivian Mercer opened the closet. A metal box sat on the bottom shelf.
"Your mother was gathering evidence," she said. "Payments. Fraudulent invoices. Contracts between my husband and the clinic. She wanted to destroy our family."
"She wanted to stop you."
"Same thing. We were building our first treatment center then. If she had made those documents public, there would be no Mercer Group. Adrian would have grown up the son of a criminal."
"He did anyway."
She jerked as if I had slapped her.
"I did everything to keep him from finding out."
"No. You did everything to keep him from being held accountable. That's not protection. That's teaching a child he can get away with anything."
She took a folder tied with a blue ribbon out of the box. My mother's handwriting covered the front: *If anything happens to me.*
My knees went weak.
"Give it to me."
"First, we make a deal."
"There is nothing between us to bargain with."
"You have the foundation. Withdraw the complaints. Give control back to Adrian. I'll give you the evidence, and you'll never see me again."
"You kept my life from me for eighteen years. And now you think you can sell it back to me piece by piece?"
"You'd be a fool to refuse."
"No. I'd be your daughter-in-law if I agreed."
Vivian Mercer opened the folder. Inside were copies of documents, photographs, and my mother's letter to the district attorney. She held a lighter to the edge of the paper.
"My mother had to die because of this?" I asked. "Because of some invoices?"
"Because she didn't know when to stop. She was offered money. A seat on the board. A stake in the first treatment center. She still went to the district attorney."
"And you ordered your husband to stop them on the road."
"To scare them. My husband wasn't supposed to ram their car."
"Is that what you always do? Order half a crime, then decide you're innocent of the other half when people die?"
"Your father created the conflict himself. He could have kept quiet."
"He could have. Like Adrian. Like Victor Sanford. Like everyone else you used to build a wall around yourself for eighteen years. But he didn't. That's why I'm standing in his house now while you hold a lighter to his truth."
A floorboard creaked behind me.
I didn't turn around. Graham's breathing grew quieter in my earpiece.
"He's in the house," he said. "To your right. Don't move."
Victor Sanford stepped out of the darkness.
I recognized him by the scar above his eyebrow and the ring set with a black stone. He was older than in the photographs, but his eyes were the same: small, sharp, restless. He carried a metal gas can in one hand.
"You brought her here," he said to Vivian Mercer. "After everything, you decided to bring her here."
"She'll surrender the foundation."
Sanford laughed.
"She's recording us. You've forgotten how to count to two."
Vivian Mercer spun toward me. For the first time, her eyes held something other than coldness. Fear.
"Take it off."
"No."
Sanford set the gas can on the floor.
"I don't care about your foundation. I need to make sure there's nothing left in this house that can talk."
"It already has," I said. "And so have you."
He stepped toward me. I pressed the button on my bracelet.
The door flew open. Graham's security team and the lead detective rushed into the room.
Sanford lunged toward the window, but they took him to the floor.
The can overturned, and a harsh smell spread through the room.
Vivian Mercer raised the lighter. The flame licked the edge of the folder, but I knocked it from her hand.
Papers scattered across the floor. One corner caught fire. Andrew smothered it with his jacket.
They were forced down side by side on the floor of my nursery. The two people who had once decided my childhood, my name, and my life could be shut away in a metal box. Now they lay beneath the cameras, and I was still standing.
Vivian Mercer looked at me as though I hadn't betrayed her, merely disrupted the order of her house.
"You brought them here."
"No. You brought them here yourself eighteen years ago, when you decided I wasn't a human being, just a clock you could wait out."
They pulled her hands behind her back. Handcuffs clicked around her wrists. The sound was quieter than I had dreamed it would be. No music. No thunder. Just metal closing around the hands that had held my life for far too long.
She turned back in the hallway.
"Adrian will never forgive you."
"His forgiveness is no longer on my list of needs."
"And you'll forgive him."
I looked at her.
"You still don't understand, even now. This story isn't about him anymore."
They led her away.
I remained in the nursery among the scattered papers, the smell of smoke, and the things that had once been mine. Graham came in after the detective gave him the signal. He stopped in the doorway, careful not to break my silence.
"Is it over?" I asked.
"No. But no one will ever hide the ending from you again."
He rolled closer. I sat on the floor in front of him because my legs could no longer hold me. Graham didn't try to lift me. He simply offered me his shoulder. I leaned against him, closed my eyes, and for the first time all day allowed myself not to be strong.
Around us, detectives worked, gathering documents and photographing the room. Beneath my palm, my baby was alive. Beside me was a man who didn't demand to be called my savior. On the floor lay my mother's letter, which would finally be read.
And for the first time in eighteen years, the house where I had once been loved before all this pain knew my name again.