Chapter 3 - Nathan Arrives Before Anyone Calls
Nathan stood on the porch in a black tuxedo.
His eyes immediately found Daniel’s folder.
Alicia saw the fear.
“You knew.”
Nathan swallowed. “I can explain.”
“Are your parents dead?”
His silence answered first.
“My father is. My mother isn’t.”
Alicia’s face hardened. Nathan had told her both parents died when he was seventeen.
His mother was Laura Mercer—the woman who approached Alicia outside the bridal boutique.
Thomas Mercer was Laura’s older brother.
Nathan admitted he discovered Alicia’s name in the Cole trust six months earlier after sealed records were reviewed by a court.
He had been terrified.
“I thought we might be related.”
“And you still planned to marry me?”
“I didn’t know what the record meant. My mother refused to explain.”
Daniel found the original trust summary.
David Cole created it twenty-eight years earlier. Any biological child of David automatically became a beneficiary.
Nathan qualified.
Alicia had been added through a confidential paternity notice filed the night she was born.
The filing attorney was Thomas Mercer.
Robert slowly turned toward Evelyn.
Caroline’s unnamed man had been David Cole.
Robert sat down.
Alicia could barely breathe.
Nathan moved toward her, but she raised a hand.
“Don’t.”
She needed facts before comfort.
Daniel asked whether a DNA test had ever been performed.
No result appeared in the trust file.
They called Thomas.
He answered.
When Alicia asked whether David had been tested against her, Thomas went quiet.
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
“I never saw the final result.”
Daniel frowned. As attorney and trustee, Thomas should have known.
Thomas claimed the laboratory sent the result directly to Caroline and David.
David continued funding a trust share for Alicia for years.
Then Thomas said something stranger.
Alicia’s mother had stopped speaking David’s name after “your father confronted him.”
Robert shouted, “I never confronted David Cole.”
May you like
Thomas answered quietly:
“I wasn’t talking about you.”
