Chapter 4 - THE FATHER SHE NEVER KNEW
Rachel had spent seventeen years believing rain killed her father.
A wet highway.
A guardrail.
A police officer at the door.
Now one sentence had destroyed all of it.
“Murdered by who?”
Mercer hesitated.
Nicholas stepped forward.
“That hesitation is going to become very unhealthy.”
“Nicholas.”
Rachel’s voice stopped him.
She looked at Mercer.
“I want the truth. Not threats.”
Mercer nodded shakily.
“Your father was investigating money moving through Valenti-controlled companies. He initially believed Nicholas’s father was laundering it.”
Nicholas’s expression hardened at the mention of his father.
“But Thomas discovered someone inside the organization was redirecting funds and creating fake records.”
“Who?”
“I never knew.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
“You knew my father?”
“He saved my life.”
Mercer sat down.
“He gave me evidence and told me to protect it. Two days later, his car went off the road.”
Rachel’s throat tightened.
“And you hired me because…”
“Because you became exactly what he was. Brilliant with numbers. Impossible to intimidate. Incapable of ignoring something that doesn’t balance.”
Rachel laughed bitterly.
“You could have told me.”
“I was afraid telling you would get you killed.”
“You put me on the same files.”
“I thought enough time had passed.”
Nicholas looked at the ledger.
“It hadn’t.”
A sharp knock sounded.
Daniel entered.
“We have a problem.”
His phone displayed security footage.
Evan was in Rachel’s apartment.
Packing.
Rachel stared.
“He’s leaving.”
“No,” Daniel said.
“He’s searching.”
On-screen, Evan ripped open a drawer, pulled out folders, then checked beneath furniture.
Rachel suddenly remembered something.
“My mother’s recipe box.”
Everyone looked at her.
“I kept my father’s old photographs in it. There was a key taped behind one.”
Mercer stood.
“What key?”
“I don’t know. I’ve had it since I was fourteen.”
Nicholas was already moving.
They reached the townhouse twelve minutes later.
The front door stood open.
The kitchen was destroyed.
Drawers emptied.
Cabinets torn apart.
The recipe box lay smashed on the floor.
The photographs were gone.
So was the key.
Rachel’s face fell.
Then Nicholas noticed something under the refrigerator.
A torn photograph.
He picked it up.
A younger Thomas Bennett stood beside another man outside a lakeside cabin.
Rachel recognized her father immediately.
Nicholas recognized the other man.
His own father, Antonio Valenti.
On the back, written in faded ink, were six words:
IF I DIE, TRUST ANTONIO’S SON.
Rachel looked up slowly.
“Your father knew mine.”
Nicholas nodded.
But Daniel was staring at the photograph differently.
He zoomed in with his phone.
Behind Thomas and Antonio stood a third man.
Young.
Smiling.
May you like
Rachel’s stomach dropped.
It was Charles Mercer.
