Chapter 7 - Richard Remembers
Marcus turned slowly.
Richard lifted the ledger.
“Looking for this?”
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then Marcus laughed.
“You can barely stand.”
“I only needed to stand long enough to reach your car.”
Marcus checked his coat pocket, then looked toward the garage passage.
“You followed me?”
“You forgot that I built the service corridors.”
Richard’s voice was weak, but every word carried through the basement.
Isabella moved toward him.
Marcus stepped between them.
“You should be in bed.”
“And you should be in prison.”
Marcus’s expression hardened.
“You signed the amendment.”
“After you filled my blood with chemicals.”
“You cannot prove that.”
Richard looked toward Dr. Rusk’s unconscious body.
“He can.”
“Rusk will say whatever protects his license.”
“And the camera?”
Marcus’s gaze shifted.
Richard continued.
“You found the camera in my study after the accident. You never found the second one.”
Isabella remembered the hidden lens inside the bedroom clock.
“That camera belongs to you?” she asked.
Richard nodded.
“I installed it after I realized my medication was being changed.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried. Every message was intercepted.”
Marcus stepped closer.
“You were confused long before the accident.”
“Not confused enough to forget the night you called me to the cliffs.”
The confidence left Marcus’s face.
Richard looked at Isabella.
“The call came from your mother’s old number.”
“My mother’s number was disconnected eighteen years ago.”
“Someone reactivated it.”
“What did the caller say?”
“That Elena was alive and waiting near the river road.”
Richard had driven out during heavy rain. When he approached the cliffside barrier, he attempted to slow down.
The brakes did not respond.
He remembered striking the barrier and hearing metal tear. He remembered the car turning as the river appeared below him.
Then a truck hit the rear of his vehicle, preventing it from going over the edge.
The truck driver disappeared before police arrived.
“Who saved you?” Isabella asked.
“I don’t know.”
Marcus moved toward Richard.
“Give me the ledger.”
Richard held it behind his back.
“The accounts show everything. Payments to Rusk. Bribes to board members. Transfers through North Vale Holdings.”
Vivian stared at Marcus.
“You told me North Vale was established for my ownership.”
“It was.”
“Then why does the ledger identify you as the controlling party?”
Marcus looked at her with open contempt.
“Because you were never capable of controlling anything.”
Vivian slapped him.
The sound echoed through the basement.
Marcus seized her wrist, but Isabella pushed between them.
“Let her go.”
He released Vivian and stepped back.
“You think this document saves you?” he asked Richard. “You think the original trust matters?”
“It matters to the courts.”
“Only if Isabella survives long enough to file it.”
A low alarm began ringing through the mansion.
Someone had triggered the fire system.
Red emergency lights illuminated the basement.
Marcus’s phone vibrated. He checked the message and smiled.
“The gate is open,” he said.
“Who is coming?” Isabella asked.
“The person who owns Schedule E.”
A crash sounded upstairs.
Then another.
The mansion’s security system announced that the main entrance had been breached.
Isabella reached for her phone, but the network had been disabled.
“Bennett will enter when she loses contact with me,” she said.
“Detective Bennett is following the wrong car,” Marcus replied. “By the time she realizes it, we will be gone.”
Richard threw the ledger toward Isabella.
Marcus lunged.
Vivian caught the ledger first.
Marcus grabbed her robe and dragged her toward him.
“Give it to me.”
Vivian held it against her chest.
“All these years,” she said, “you told me Richard treated me like a decoration.”
“He did.”
“You told me Isabella would remove me from the family.”
“She would have.”
“You told me everything we did was necessary.”
“It was necessary for me.”
Vivian looked toward Richard.
Her expression carried shame, fear, and something close to grief.
“I did want the house,” she said. “I wanted the company. I wanted people to stop looking at me as Richard Mercer’s second wife.”
“You drugged me for a title,” Richard replied.
Vivian lowered her eyes.
“Yes.”
The answer seemed to cost her more than any denial.
“But I never agreed to kill you.”
Marcus’s hand tightened around her arm.
“You agreed not to ask questions.”
Vivian suddenly threw the ledger across the room.
Isabella caught it.
Marcus pushed Vivian aside and charged.
Richard swung the walking cane against the emergency light switch. The basement fell dark again.
Isabella ran into the service passage with the ledger.
Marcus followed.
The corridor was narrow and almost completely black. Isabella used the wall to guide herself while Marcus’s footsteps closed behind her.
“Stop running,” he called. “There is nowhere to go.”
She reached the old laundry room and pulled the alarm lever.
Nothing happened.
Marcus had disabled it.
She continued toward the main floor.
At the end of the passage, she found the panel leading into the living room. Voices were speaking on the other side.
A woman said, “Where is Isabella?”
Isabella froze.
The voice sounded exactly like Elena.
Marcus stopped several feet behind her.
“You understand now,” he whispered. “Your mother did not disappear because of an accident.”
Isabella turned.
“Is she alive?”
Marcus smiled.
“That depends on what you believe a mother is.”
He reached for the ledger.
Isabella pulled the service panel open and stepped into the living room.
A woman stood beside the illuminated bar.
She had Grace Holloway’s face.
But now she wore a dark wig instead of gray hair, and her posture was completely different.
On the bar lay a collection of prosthetic pieces, skin-colored adhesive, and the bandage she had worn in the basement.
The disguise had been convincing because it had been created from old photographs and Isabella’s memories.
The woman turned.
Her natural face was younger than Grace’s, perhaps in her early forties. Her features were unfamiliar, but her eyes resembled Isabella’s.
“Hello, Isabella,” she said.
“Who are you?”
The woman looked toward Schedule E in Isabella’s hand.
“My name is Eleanor Vale.”
E.V.
The second beneficiary.
May you like
Eleanor smiled faintly.
“And Elena Mercer was my mother too.”
