Chapter 7 - DIANE’S DAUGHTER
My mother had always told me I was adopted.
She claimed my birth parents died in a car accident.
Daniel was my adoptive brother, though neither of us ever used that word.
He was family.
Now the ledger revealed I had been born to Diane thirty years earlier.
She gave me away because I was female.
Then, decades later, she brought me back into the Mercer family as Luke’s wife.
The marriage had been arranged without either of us knowing the truth.
Luke was my biological half brother.
The child inside me was genetically connected to Robert through both sides of the family.
I could not breathe.
Dr. Brooks ordered additional testing and counseling.
Rebecca warned that the records might be manipulated.
DNA testing removed all doubt.
Diane was my mother.
Luke and I shared a father.
Our marriage was built on concealed incest.
My daughter’s biological risks were unknown.
Luke locked himself in a hospital bathroom and cried.
I sat beneath the fluorescent lights feeling as if my body no longer belonged to me.
Daniel held my hand.
“You’re still you.”
“They chose everything.”
“Not what you do next.”
That sentence became the first solid thing beneath my feet.
Diane denied the DNA results.
Then she changed her story.
She claimed giving me away saved me from Margaret, whom she described as unstable.
She claimed arranging my marriage to Luke reunited the family.
She called the embryo a mistake made by Vale.
Every crime became an act of love in her mouth.
Rebecca prepared criminal charges.
But Diane’s guardianship hearing remained active.
Her attorney argued that the revelations caused me psychological instability and that she should control my medical care.
The courtroom filled with reporters.
Diane entered in her navy cardigan.
The same one she wore while swinging the bamboo stick.
She smiled at me like a mother expecting gratitude.
Then she presented a video.
It showed me inside the dining room, screaming and breaking the bamboo stick.
The attack before that moment was missing.
Diane claimed I attacked her after she tried to calm me.
Ortiz produced the empty camera card.
The original footage had streamed to a server they still could not locate.
Without it, the case relied on witnesses.
Luke testified against Diane.
Daniel testified.
Margaret testified by video from the hospital.
Diane’s attorney attacked each of them.
Then the courtroom doors opened.
A uniformed officer entered with a small black storage drive.
It had been found inside Robert’s coffin.
The drive contained the full dining-room recording.
But it contained something else too.
A video recorded four years earlier.
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Robert faced the camera.
“If you are watching this, Diane has killed me.”
