Chapter 12 - The Lawyer Who Didn’t Exist
Samuel Price had an office.
Business cards.
A legal website.
Professional photographs.
A New York Bar number.
Everything.
Except the Bar number belonged to an attorney who died six years earlier.
The office had been rented by the month.
The website appeared fourteen months ago.
Exactly when Maya created Northstar.
Maya had been manipulated before Liam was conceived.
Before Eleanor knew about the Vance trust.
Before Thomas supposedly started his plan.
Someone had anticipated all of this.
That changed everything.
Police recovered fingerprints from Price's abandoned office.
No match.
But security footage showed him leaving twelve hours earlier.
Gray coat.
Baseball cap.
Approximately fifty.
Then Maya froze the image.
“I’ve seen him before.”
“Where?”
“My wedding.”
I searched our photographs.
There.
Back row.
A stranger behind Eleanor.
Then another photograph.
Liam’s baby shower.
Same man.
Older beard.
Different glasses.
Watching.
Not Maya.
Me.
Ethan enlarged the face.
His expression changed.
“David.”
“What?”
“I know him.”
Twenty-two years earlier, my father, Robert Mercer, died after allegedly embezzling money from his employer.
I was fourteen.
Eleanor told Chloe and me he died in a car crash while fleeing investigators.
I had spent half my life ashamed of him.
Ethan pointed at Samuel Price.
“That’s your father.”
I laughed.
Then stopped.
The face.
My face.
Older.
Heavier.
But undeniable.
I called Eleanor from police custody.
“Is Dad alive?”
Silence.
That silence answered before she did.
“Yes.”
I sat down.
“Twenty-two years?”
“He had to disappear.”
“Why?”
“He stole from dangerous people.”
“Who?”
“The Vances.”
There it was again.
My father had been an accountant for a Vance subsidiary.
He discovered executives laundering money through shell companies.
Thomas was involved.
Rebecca knew.
Robert copied records.
Then vanished before he could testify.
Eleanor told us he was dead because she believed that kept us safe.
Years later, I married Maya Vance without knowing she belonged to the same family.
Coincidence?
Maybe.
Except Robert had attended our wedding.
He knew.
He had watched me marry the granddaughter of the people who destroyed him.
And fourteen months ago, he approached Maya under a fake name.
My father created Northstar.
My father intercepted $31 million.
My father had been moving pieces around us while remaining invisible.
Then I received an email.
From Samuel Price.
One sentence:
Son, Rebecca isn't running.
She's coming to kill me.
May you like
Attached was an address.
And a photograph of my father holding Liam’s missing hospital bracelet.
