Chapter 12 - Aunt Evelyn
We didn't storm the estate.
We involved law enforcement.
Dominic was found alive inside.
So was an eighty-year-old woman.
Evelyn.
She wasn't a mastermind sitting on a throne.
She had dementia.
Severe.
Some days she barely remembered her own name.
The person controlling S7 couldn't be her.
But her biometric data had been used.
Someone had exploited her.
Dominic had been brought there to discover documents Chloe believed were hidden in Evelyn's safe.
He claimed he went willingly because Chloe convinced him the documents could protect Sophia and Noah.
Then unknown men intercepted him.
They disappeared before police arrived.
Inside the safe:
Letters between my mother and Evelyn.
Their feud wasn't about money.
It was about Charles.
Both sisters had loved my father.
Evelyn believed Charles chose my mother because Sterling wealth came with her.
Years later, Evelyn tried exposing financial misconduct.
My parents buried her allegations and cut her from the family.
Margaret grew up believing the Sterlings destroyed her mother.
Her entire career had been revenge disguised as justice.
But Margaret was already in custody.
So who continued S7?
One letter provided the next clue.
My mother wrote:
If anything happens to me, Eleanor knows where the second system is.
Eleanor.
No surname.
Then Dominic whispered:
“I know Eleanor.”
We stared at him.
“Who?”
“My mother.”
Dominic's mother, Eleanor Mercer, supposedly died when he was nineteen.
Again, supposedly.
Dominic looked sick.
“My mother worked for Sterling before I was born.”
Victor searched archived payroll.
Eleanor Mercer.
Executive systems analyst.
S7 development team.
Dominic hadn't accidentally entered my life.
His mother had built part of the system that eventually modeled mine.
May you like
And according to death records…
Eleanor had died on the exact same day my father first met twenty-year-old Dominic.
