Chapter 3 - The Fortress
The Mercer Estate was less of a house and more of a modern fortress hidden within fifty acres of Carolina pine forest. The ambulance ride had been a blur of pain medication and rain beating against the windows. When I woke up, I was in a bedroom larger than my entire apartment. Sunlight streamed through floor-to-ceiling bulletproof windows. I was lying on a plush, adjustable medical bed, my arm elevated and my ribs wrapped tightly. In the corner of the room, a private nurse was feeding Noah a bottle while Jonathan stood by the window, speaking quietly into a phone.
He ended the call when he saw I was awake and updated me on my parents. According to his security team, they were currently nursing hangovers after throwing an extravagant engagement party for my sister at the country club. They had spent thirty thousand dollars on a party I wasn't invited to, paid for with my stolen money. “Darren Cole brought the documents to them,” Jonathan explained. “Your father forged your signature to take out a short-term, high-interest bridge loan against the projected value of the shares. But the bank won't release the actual shares without a physical, notarized meeting with you. Which your father scheduled for tomorrow.”
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Tomorrow. My father was going to tell the bank I had died in the crash and present forged guardianship papers for Noah. A surge of raw, unadulterated rage washed over me. I had spent my entire life trying to please them, only to be cast aside when I got pregnant. But physical abandonment was one thing; murder was another. I told Jonathan we needed to stop them.
Jonathan explained that arresting them now wouldn't work. Without Darren Cole's testimony, my father would claim Cole acted alone, hire the best lawyers, and tie it up in court for years. “Then what do we do?” I asked. Jonathan pulled up a chair and leaned forward, the silver in his hair catching the morning light. “We let them think they won. We let them walk into the bank tomorrow. We let them commit federal bank fraud on camera. And then, Claire, you rise from the dead.”
