Chapter 5 - The Secret in Tommy’s Blood
I read the sentence three times.
It still made no sense.
“My father died when I was nine.”
Daniel said nothing.
“My mother raised us alone.”
Liam watched me carefully.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
I turned toward Daniel.
He looked uncomfortable.
“I found records connected to your mother.”
“What records?”
“Payments.”
My throat tightened.
“From whom?”
Daniel placed another document on the desk.
The Mercer family.
For twenty-two years.
My knees nearly gave out.
Liam caught my arm.
I pulled away.
“No.”
I needed space.
Air.
Something.
“My mother hated organized crime. She hated everything connected to people like you.”
Liam didn’t react to the insult.
Daniel spoke softly.
“Claire, Tommy’s biological father may have been Liam’s father.”
Silence.
I stared at Liam.
Then Daniel.
Then back again.
“That would make Tommy…”
“Our half brother,” Liam said.
The words landed like stones.
Suddenly the impossible job offer made sense.
My access.
Tommy’s records.
Daniel remembering me.
Someone had known the connection before any of us.
Liam ordered an independent DNA test.
Forty-eight hours later, the result came back.
Tommy was their half brother.
My mother had carried that secret to her grave.
I wasn’t related to Liam.
But Tommy was.
And somebody had been watching him because of it.
The biggest shock came next.
Daniel discovered that the experimental leukemia trial Tommy needed had quietly rejected his application months earlier.
Not because he was ineligible.
Because someone had interfered.
Dr. Cross.
I felt sick.
“He kept Tommy from treatment?”
Daniel nodded.
“To make you desperate enough to accept the job.”
Liam’s face became frighteningly still.
I had learned that his silence was far more dangerous than his shouting.
“Find Cross.”
Leo left immediately.
I grabbed Liam’s arm.
“No.”
He looked at me.
“No revenge.”
“He used your brother as leverage.”
“My brother.”
“Our brother.”
That silenced me.
Liam’s voice softened.
“He’s my brother too, Claire.”
For the first time since I arrived, I understood the strange shape our lives had taken.
I had entered the mansion because Tommy was dying.
I had thought Liam Mercer was simply a paycheck.
Now the man in that bed shared blood with the person I loved most in the world.
And when Liam called St. Catherine’s himself, everything changed.
Tommy was transferred to one of the best cancer centers in the country.
The trial costs disappeared.
So did the hospital debt.
When I confronted Liam, he shrugged.
“You said you needed me alive until Friday.”
“That doesn’t mean you buy my family.”
“I’m not buying anything.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Taking care of my brother.”
I looked at him.
“And you.”
The words were quiet.
Dangerously quiet.
My heart did something inconvenient.
That evening, we sat beside the open window.
Not just open blinds.
Open glass.
Fresh air entered the room.
“You know,” I said, “when I got here, this place smelled terrible.”
“That was your perfume.”
I laughed.
He smiled.
Then he reached for my hand.
This time, I let him.
“I spent eighteen months thinking darkness was what I deserved,” he said.
“You don’t get to decide what you deserve forever.”
“You always talk to patients like this?”
“Only difficult ones.”
“And if I recover?”
“I’ll find new insults.”
His thumb moved across my knuckles.
For one suspended second, the world outside the mansion disappeared.
Then an alarm sounded.
Leo burst through the door.
“Evan is gone.”
Liam’s face emptied.
“What?”
“We found his tutor unconscious. East gate camera was disabled.”
Daniel appeared behind Leo.
He held a piece of paper.
“It was Cross.”
Liam tried to stand.
I stopped him.
Daniel read the message.
Bring Liam to St. Catherine’s old research wing. No police. No guards. Claire comes too.
My blood froze.
“Why me?”
Daniel turned the paper over.
There was another sentence.
Ask Claire what her mother stole twenty-three years ago.
I stared at it.
“I don’t know what that means.”
But Liam was no longer looking at the note.
He was looking at the photograph we had found in the storage case.
The photograph of Tommy.
He turned it over.
Hidden beneath the handwritten message was a faded hospital inventory number.
Daniel recognized it.
“So that’s what Cross wants.”
“What?” I demanded.
He looked at me.
“Your mother didn’t just know the Mercer family.”
He swallowed.
May you like
“She stole evidence that could destroy the person who has been controlling all of this.”
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