Chapter 4 - Evelyn’s Last Warning
Nathan wanted to open the locket immediately.
Grace stopped him.
“Evelyn gave instructions.”
Nathan stared at her.
“My grandmother is dead.”
“And she knew she might die before she could finish this.”
That silenced him.
Grace explained that Evelyn had approached her privately after discovering Lily’s existence.
The older woman had apologized.
Not with excuses.
With tears.
Evelyn insisted she had never ordered Grace to disappear and had never authorized Harold Vance to threaten her.
Someone had used Evelyn’s name.
Someone with access to Mercer family records.
“Why didn’t Grandma come to me?”
“She tried.”
Nathan frowned.
Grace told him Evelyn had begun suspecting that Nathan’s calls, mail, and even appointments were being quietly filtered.
At first she blamed staff.
Then she found something worse.
Documents carrying her signature that she swore she had never signed.
Nathan remembered Evelyn becoming secretive during her final year.
He had assumed age and illness were taking their toll.
Maybe he had been wrong.
“She gave me the locket and told me to protect Lily,” Grace said.
“Why return to my house as an employee?”
Grace looked embarrassed.
“Because Evelyn arranged it.”
Nathan leaned back.
That explained something he had never questioned.
Grace’s application had arrived with an extraordinary recommendation from a household staffing agency his grandmother trusted.
“She wanted Lily near me.”
“Yes.”
“Without telling me she was mine?”
“She wanted proof first.”
“Proof of what?”
Grace looked toward the hospital door.
“That’s the part she wouldn’t tell me.”
Nathan’s phone rang.
His estate manager.
“Mr. Mercer, you need to come home.”
“What happened?”
“Someone entered your grandmother’s old study.”
Nathan’s eyes sharpened.
“Victoria?”
“We don’t know. The alarm was triggered after she left.”
Nathan immediately stood.
Grace caught his sleeve.
“Don’t leave the locket here.”
He looked down.
“Why?”
“Because Victoria wasn’t trying to hurt me when you walked in.”
Nathan’s expression changed.
Grace continued quietly.
“She was trying to make me tell her where Evelyn’s papers were.”
Nathan glanced at Lily.
“And the hockey stick?”
Grace’s face tightened.
“When I refused, she saw Lily wearing the chain.”
Nathan carefully placed the evidence bag containing the unopened locket inside his inner jacket pocket.
Then his phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number.
DON’T OPEN WHAT EVELYN LEFT BEHIND.
Nathan read it twice.
A second message appeared.
May you like
ASK YOUR FATHER WHAT HE SIGNED.
Nathan’s father, Charles Mercer, had been dead for six years.
