Chapter 6 - The Photograph That Shouldn’t Exist
Sebastian Mercer entered the music room smiling.
At sixty-four, he still carried himself like a man ten years younger.
Silver hair.
Perfect suit.
Quiet authority.
He had spent decades being the person everyone sought when Dante’s father became unreasonable.
The reasonable Mercer.
The patient Mercer.
The uncle who remembered birthdays.
The man who comforted Dante after Lucia vanished.
Now Dante could barely look at him without hearing Lucia’s warning.
Sebastian glanced around.
“Am I interrupting something?”
“No,” Dante said.
Adrian remained silent.
Rosa held her hands together.
Sebastian noticed her.
“Mrs. Voss.”
“Sir.”
“What brings you into this mausoleum?”
Dante watched his uncle carefully.
“An alarm.”
“So I heard.”
Sebastian looked toward the piano.
“Anything missing?”
“Not that we’ve found.”
For one second, Sebastian’s gaze dropped toward Dante’s hand.
The folded note was already inside his pocket.
Sebastian smiled.
“Probably another bad sensor.”
“Probably.”
The old man studied his nephew.
“You look tired.”
“I am.”
“You should sleep.”
“Maybe.”
Sebastian left.
Dante waited until the footsteps disappeared.
Then he turned toward Adrian.
“He knew.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I know him.”
“So do I.”
“Do you?”
Adrian rubbed his face.
“Dante, suspicion is not proof.”
“I have a letter from my sister saying Sebastian knew about the accounts.”
Adrian stared.
“What letter?”
“Lucia left it with Jacob.”
Rosa watched Adrian’s reaction.
He seemed genuinely stunned.
“She contacted Jacob after leaving us?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“We don’t know.”
Adrian cursed under his breath.
Dante walked toward the window.
“Tell me everything.”
Adrian looked toward Rosa.
“Everything?”
“She stays.”
Rosa was surprised.
Dante continued.
“Her husband died because of this.”
Adrian sat.
Then, for the first time in fifteen years, he told Dante what actually happened after the river.
Adrian found Lucia eleven days after the crash.
Jacob contacted him.
The young driver had seen Adrian’s name on paperwork Lucia carried and gambled that he could be trusted.
Adrian met them at a service station north of Albany.
That was when the photograph had been taken.
“Who took it?” Dante asked.
“A waitress.”
“Why?”
“Lucia asked.”
“Why would someone hiding ask for a photograph?”
Adrian’s voice softened.
“She said if she disappeared again, she wanted proof she had survived once.”
That sentence nearly broke Dante.
Adrian continued.
Lucia had discovered multiple shell companies moving money through Mercer-controlled businesses.
She believed Sebastian was preparing to shift control away from Dante.
Not just financially.
Politically.
Within the organization.
“Why didn’t she come to me?”
“Because she thought your security was compromised.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
Dante turned.
“How badly?”
“Three men reported directly to Sebastian.”
“Names.”
“Two are dead. The third left the country years ago.”
“And you never told me?”
“I removed them quietly.”
“You lied.”
“To keep you alive.”
Dante’s expression hardened.
“That sentence is becoming extremely convenient.”
Adrian accepted the criticism.
For six months, Adrian helped Lucia move between locations.
Jacob transported documents.
Then one evening Lucia disappeared from an apartment in Vermont.
There was no sign of forced entry.
No struggle.
Only one message.
Don’t look for me.
“She wrote that?” Dante asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you believe it?”
“No.”
“Then why stop?”
“I didn’t.”
Adrian looked exhausted.
“I searched for years.”
“And found nothing?”
“One thing.”
Dante waited.
“A photograph.”
Adrian reached inside his jacket.
He carried a wallet Dante had seen a thousand times.
From a hidden sleeve, he removed an old image.
“You’ve had this on you?”
“For nine years.”
Dante took it.
The photograph showed a woman leaving a small church.
Dark hair.
Sunglasses.
Older.
But unmistakable.
Lucia.
On the back was a date.
Six years after her supposed death.
Dante gripped the photograph.
“She was alive.”
“At least then.”
“Where?”
“New Hampshire.”
“Did you go there?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“The church had no record of her.”
“Who took the picture?”
“A private investigator.”
“Where is he?”
“Dead.”
Dante looked sharply at Adrian.
“Natural causes.”
“Convenient.”
“I know.”
Rosa examined the photo.
“Who is the child?”
Dante had not noticed.
In the background, partly hidden behind Lucia, stood a young boy.
About ten.
Adrian frowned.
“I never knew.”
Dante flipped the image.
No other information.
Rosa whispered, “Could she have had a son?”
Dante stared.
Lucia had been twenty-eight when the photo was taken.
Possible.
But something about the boy bothered him.
Not his face.
His jacket.
A private-school crest.
Adrian noticed Dante’s focus.
“You recognize it?”
Dante nodded.
“St. Catherine’s.”
Rosa looked confused.
“Where?”
“Connecticut.”
Adrian stood.
“The photograph was taken in New Hampshire.”
“Yes.”
“Then why would a child from a Connecticut school be there?”
Dante took out his phone.
He called no one inside the Mercer organization.
Instead, he contacted an attorney whose loyalty had never involved family business.
“Rebecca.”
“Dante? It’s nearly midnight.”
“I need a school enrollment record.”
“That sounds illegal.”
“I need whatever you can obtain legally.”
“Better.”
He sent the crest.
“St. Catherine’s. Approximately nine years ago. I’m looking for a boy who may have been around ten.”
“That is not much.”
“Start there.”
He ended the call.
Rosa looked tired.
“I need to get back to Ellie.”
Dante nodded.
“I’ll take you.”
Adrian stopped him.
“Dante.”
“What?”
“If Sebastian is involved, you cannot behave like you know.”
“I’m aware.”
“He has people everywhere.”
“Not everywhere.”
“You don’t know that.”
Dante looked toward Rosa.
Then remembered his mother’s name.
Ask about Evelyn.
“My mother.”
Adrian frowned.
“What about her?”
“Lucia wanted me to ask about Evelyn.”
“Ask whom?”
Dante looked again at the brass key found with the note.
The key had a number engraved on it.
214.
Adrian examined it.
“Bank box?”
“Maybe.”
Rosa looked at the number.
“Or a locker.”
Dante stared at the key.
His mother had died when he was eighteen.
Lucia had been fourteen.
Cancer.
At least that was the story.
Evelyn Mercer had been gentle, quiet, and almost completely absent from family business.
But Lucia had hidden a message connecting her mother to whatever she discovered.
Dante suddenly remembered something.
One week before Evelyn died, she had given him advice he never understood.
If anyone ever tells you the Mercer family survives because of strength, don’t believe them.
We survive because someone always agrees to carry the secrets.
At eighteen, Dante thought she meant marriage.
Now he wasn’t sure.
His phone rang.
Rebecca.
“That was fast.”
“I haven’t found the boy.”
“What did you find?”
“The school crest you sent isn’t St. Catherine’s current crest.”
“I know.”
“It was used for only one academic year.”
“When?”
“Exactly nine years ago.”
Dante waited.
“And I found something else.”
“What?”
“That school closed suddenly halfway through the term.”
“Why?”
“Financial scandal.”
“And?”
“The largest anonymous donor who tried to keep it open was a woman named Evelyn Hale.”
Dante’s blood went cold.
Evelyn.
His mother’s name.
“Hale?” Adrian asked after Dante repeated it.
Dante stared at the photograph of Lucia.
Maybe it was not coincidence.
Maybe Lucia had been living under their mother’s name.
Then Rebecca said something else.
“There’s one more thing, Dante.”
“What?”
“Evelyn Hale listed an emergency contact on one archived document.”
Dante tightened his grip on the phone.
“Who?”
Rebecca answered.
“Jacob Voss.”
Rosa made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a sob.
Nine years after Lucia supposedly died, she had been alive.
Using her mother’s first name.
And the emergency contact she trusted was Rosa’s husband.
Jacob had known where Lucia was for far longer than his recording admitted.
Which meant the locked box contained only part of his secret.
May you like
And if Jacob had protected Lucia until nine years ago, Rosa began to wonder what else her husband had taken to the grave.
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