Chapter 10 - THE SON WHO WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO EXIST
Grant stood motionless beneath the chandelier.
On the screen, his father continued speaking.
“Grant, I know you've spent your life trying to become the man you thought I wanted you to be.”
The recording crackled.
“But there is something I should have told you long ago.”
Mercer watched with obvious satisfaction.
Thomas took a shaky breath.
“You are not my biological son.”
The words struck like a gunshot.
Grant didn't move.
I reached for his hand.
His fingers were cold.
Mercer smiled.
“Beautiful, isn't it? Forty-one years of lies.”
Grant stared at the screen.
“Who was my father?”
Thomas's voice continued.
“Your mother had a relationship before we married. I knew she was pregnant when I proposed. I loved her, and I chose to raise you as my own.”
Grant swallowed.
“Who?”
Mercer leaned forward.
“That's the interesting part.”
The recording changed.
A photograph appeared.
A younger Eleanor stood beside a man holding a baby.
The man looked familiar.
Painfully familiar.
Daniel Brooks.
My father.
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
Grant turned toward me.
Mercer laughed.
“Oh, this is wonderful.”
I shook my head.
“No. My father was twenty-eight when Grant was born. He was married to my mother years later. He never—”
“Daniel Brooks,” Mercer interrupted, “was close to this family long before you existed.”
Grant stepped away from me.
His face had gone white.
“Are you saying Emily is my sister?”
Mercer smiled.
“I'm saying you should question everything.”
For one terrible moment, the room seemed to collapse around us.
Then I noticed something.
The photograph.
My father was holding the baby with his left arm.
But he was wearing a wedding ring.
I remembered my mother telling me my parents married in 1988.
Grant was born in 1985.
Something didn't fit.
I looked closer.
The photograph had been altered.
The shadows around my father's shoulder were wrong.
And the baby blanket carried the Whitmore crest, embroidered in a style introduced years later.
“This is fake,” I whispered.
Mercer's smile faltered.
I stepped forward.
“You edited that photograph.”
Grant looked at me.
“How do you know?”
“Because my father taught me to notice details. Balance. Timing. Things that don't belong.”
Mercer's expression hardened.
I pointed toward the screen.
“And the man in that photograph is wearing a wedding ring from a marriage that hadn't happened yet.”
Silence.
Then Grant's phone vibrated.
A message from Victor.
DNA records located. Thomas's statement is genuine. Photograph is manipulated. Biological father identified.
Grant opened the attachment.
He stared at the name.
Then slowly raised his eyes toward Mercer.
“It's you.”
Mercer's smile disappeared.
May you like
Grant's voice was barely audible.
“Charles Mercer is my biological father.”
