Chapter 6 - Thomas Mercer Admits The Deception
Thomas stopped answering calls.
Nathan disappeared from Evelyn’s house soon afterward.
Alicia panicked until his text arrived.
I’m safe. Thomas asked me to meet him. Sending location.
They found both men in a courthouse parking garage.
Thomas carried a banker’s box containing the original trust file.
Daniel showed him Charles Hawthorne’s transcript.
Thomas read it.
Then said:
“Yes.”
He admitted knowing Robert was Alicia’s biological father three weeks after her birth.
He deliberately withheld the DNA result from the official trust record.
Why?
To protect Laura.
Samuel’s investigation threatened to expose shell companies carrying her signatures.
Thomas feared his sister could face criminal consequences.
The unresolved paternity claim gave him leverage over Caroline and Samuel.
“If Samuel backed away, I would remove Alicia,” Thomas said.
Samuel did not.
So Thomas made another compromise.
Then another.
He allowed David’s trust contributions to continue, preserving the appearance that David still believed Alicia might be his child.
Nathan stared at his uncle.
“You let me think I might be marrying my sister.”
Thomas looked ashamed.
“I was trying to unwind it quietly.”
“Quietly?”
Thomas opened the box.
The original DNA report was there.
The laboratory identifiers matched archived clinic records.
Probability of Robert Bennett’s paternity:
99.97 percent.
Robert cried.
Alicia wrapped her arms around him.
The paper did not make him her father.
It only removed a question other people had weaponized.
But another document waited inside the box.
A payment authorization dated two days before Samuel’s boating accident.
$125,000.
Recipient:
Hawthorne Investigations.
Authorized by Thomas Mercer.
Robert’s relief vanished.
“What did you pay Charles to do?”
Thomas answered:
“Follow Samuel.”
Robert moved toward him.
Police intervened.
Thomas claimed the payment was surveillance, not violence.
Daniel searched his father’s archive.
Charles had followed Samuel to the marina.
A storm warning was issued.
Samuel sailed anyway.
His boat later capsized after documented storm debris damaged it.
Charles wrote:
I SHOULD HAVE STOPPED HIM FROM LEAVING. CLIENT WANTED INFORMATION. THIS WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BECOME A FUNERAL.
There was no evidence Thomas or Charles caused Samuel’s death.
For several hours, grief had made murder feel inevitable.
May you like
Evidence said otherwise.
Not every tragedy belonged to the conspiracy.
