Chapter 5 - THE TWIN
Margaret Mercer had supposedly died in a boating accident twenty years earlier.
There was no body.
No death certificate.
Only a memorial stone paid for by Diane.
Luke remembered visiting Aunt Margaret as a child. She lived at the old maternity home and helped women “recover” after difficult deliveries.
He also remembered girls crying behind locked doors.
Diane told him they were sick.
Margaret had not died.
She had run the hidden side of the operation.
Diane controlled families and courts.
Margaret controlled births and transfers.
Ortiz tracked Eleanor’s phone to the maternity home.
Federal agents entered before dawn.
They found Dr. Vale alive, restrained in a delivery room.
Eleanor and Margaret were gone.
The ledger was missing again.
Vale agreed to talk only after receiving immunity.
Rebecca refused full immunity but offered protection.
He confessed that the Mercer network had sold female newborns for decades. Some went to wealthy adoptive families. Others entered medical studies because the Mercer bloodline carried a rare genetic marker.
Boys inherited property.
Girls generated money.
That was the real tradition.
My embryo had been created from one of my eggs and sperm taken from a donor selected for the marker.
Diane wanted a grandson to inherit the Mercer trust.
A granddaughter would be transferred, studied, or erased.
“Who is the father?” I asked.
Vale lowered his eyes.
“Robert Mercer.”
The room went silent.
Luke’s dead father had provided frozen genetic material before his death.
My daughter was biologically Luke’s half sister.
Diane planned to present her publicly as Luke’s child if she were male.
The incestuous deception meant nothing to her.
Only succession mattered.
Luke vomited into a trash can.
Vale revealed that Robert eventually regretted the system. He gathered evidence and contacted Eleanor.
Diane discovered the plan.
She ordered Margaret to kill him.
Margaret refused.
So Diane did it herself.
The bamboo stick had been used before.
Robert’s fall was staged.
Ortiz asked where the ledger was.
Vale said Margaret had it.
She intended to expose Diane.
Then his phone rang from an unknown number.
Ortiz answered.
Margaret’s voice came through.
“I have Eleanor and the ledger.”
“Are they safe?”
“For now.”
“What do you want?”
“I want Claire.”
Luke stepped forward.
“No.”
Margaret laughed.
“She is carrying the last Mercer daughter.”
May you like
Then she gave us an address.
The ancestral cemetery.
