Chapter 6 - Margaret’s Last Bargain
I met my mother in an interview room.
She looked smaller without pearls and chandeliers.
But she was still Margaret Mercer.
Still calculating.
Still dangerous.
“Where is Elena?” she asked.
“Safe.”
“She needs to hear this.”
“She doesn’t need anything from you.”
Mother smiled faintly.
“You still think this began with me.”
I said nothing.
She leaned forward.
“Elena’s father came to me.”
Robert Vale.
“He wanted money.”
“For what?”
“To disappear.”
According to Margaret, Robert had been involved in financial crimes years earlier. He learned that Elena had accidentally discovered records connecting him to Mercer accounts.
He feared exposure.
Margaret saw opportunity.
They made an agreement.
Robert would disappear.
Margaret would control the evidence.
Years later, when Elena found additional transfers, Margaret decided she had become too dangerous.
“Why not kill her?” I asked.
Mother stared at me.
“Because she was carrying your child.”
The casualness of her answer chilled me.
“You expect gratitude?”
“No.”
She looked almost offended.
“I expect you to understand that I never intended to hurt Lily.”
“You used Lily to imprison her mother.”
“I preserved your daughter.”
“You stole her.”
Mother’s composure cracked.
“I did everything for this family!”
“No. You did everything to own it.”
I stood.
She called after me.
“Daniel.”
I stopped.
“Robert is alive.”
I turned.
“Where?”
She smiled.
“That is what my lawyer and I would like to discuss.”
But Margaret had underestimated Elena again.
Because while my mother was bargaining with information, Elena had remembered something.
A phone number.
Robert had taught it to her when she was a child.
A number she had never forgotten.
We called.
Someone answered.
And after fourteen years of silence, Elena heard her father say:
May you like
“Sweetheart?”
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