TEN DAYS TO SAVE THE MERCER TWINS

The alarm upstairs belonged to Jonah.

This time, it was not his heart.

He had developed a fever.

Dr. Shah called it dangerous but manageable. Cultures were drawn, antibiotics changed, the room cooled, and every hour became another negotiation with a body too exhausted to fight.

By midnight, Jonah slept.

Blythe did not.

He stared at the ceiling until I sat beside him.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Are bad guys here because of us?”

The question cut deeper than any accusation Adrian could make.

“No.”

He turned his face toward me.

“Then why are there more guards?”

Children notice the details adults hope they miss.

I thought about lying.

I thought about Elena telling Jonah the truth in a language he could survive.

“Because I learned some adults made terrible choices,” I said. “And I’m making sure they can’t make any more.”

“Did you make terrible choices?”

I looked at his small hand in mine.

“Yes.”

He waited.

I had spent most of my life around men who demanded loyalty but offered no honesty. I did not want my sons learning that from me.

“I worked too much. I trusted people because I wanted trusting them to be easier than checking. And after your mom died, I got angry at the whole world instead of paying attention to everything she had tried to tell me.”

Blythe was quiet.

Then he squeezed my finger.

“Mom said you were stubborn.”

A laugh escaped me.

“She was right.”

“She said it like she liked it.”

“That sounds like her.”

At two in the morning, Elena found me in the chapel Genevieve had converted from an unused study. She carried two cups of coffee.

“I didn’t know you prayed,” she said.

“I don’t.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Arguing with someone who may or may not be listening.”

She handed me a cup.

“That sounds close enough.”

We sat without speaking for a while.

I finally asked the question that had been growing in me since she arrived.

“How well did you know my wife?”

Elena watched the candle flame.

“Better than I deserved.”

“What does that mean?”

“At Latham, I was a junior clinical coordinator. My mother had cancer. My younger brother was in college. I was working double shifts and sleeping four hours a night. Genevieve noticed I was skipping lunch and started bringing two sandwiches.”

That sounded exactly like Genevieve.

“She asked about everyone,” Elena continued. “Not because she was polite. Because she remembered.”

“So you became friends.”

“Slowly. Then my mother died. Genevieve came to the funeral.”

I had not known.

That realization was becoming familiar.

“There were parts of her life I never saw,” I said.

“There are parts of everyone we never see.”

It was not an accusation.

That made it worse.

At dawn, Prescott entered carrying a phone inside an evidence sleeve.

“We pulled this from the crash archive,” he said.

Genevieve’s old phone.

I stared at it.

“Where?”

“Police evidence storage. It was logged as destroyed. It wasn’t.”

Elena stood.

Prescott continued. “Forensics recovered one deleted audio file. It was created eleven minutes before the crash.”

We went to my office.

The recording lasted forty-three seconds.

At first, all we heard was Genevieve breathing.

Then her voice.

“Franklin, you are not listening to me. I know what Northlake is doing. I know Adrian moved the samples. If anything happens to me, Lawson will find out.”

A man answered.

Yates.

“Genevieve, you’re upset.”

“No. I’m done being frightened.”

“Where are you?”

“Driving home.”

“Pull over.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t understand who you are threatening.”

The recording ended.

No goodbye.

No crash.

Just silence.

Prescott said, “There’s another file.”

He played it.

This one was a voicemail Genevieve had tried to send to me.

“Lawson, call me. Please. I should have told you months ago. It’s about Jonah and Blythe, and Franklin, and Adrian. I found—”

Static swallowed the rest.

Then a violent impact.

I stopped breathing.

For two years, I had been told she died instantly.

But in the background, after the crash, I heard a faint sound.

Genevieve.

Coughing.

Alive.

Another voice entered the recording.

Male.

“Mrs. Mercer? Can you hear me?”

An EMT.

Genevieve whispered something.

Prescott boosted the volume.

“Tell Lawson…the boys…Northlake…”

Then another voice, farther away.

“Who has her phone?”

The voicemail ended.

I recognized that second voice.

Adrian.

My cousin had been at the crash.

I found him in the downstairs salon thirty minutes later. He had not been allowed to leave.

When I played the recording, he sat down.

“You were there,” I said.

He covered his face.

“You were there while she was alive.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Franklin called me. He said Genevieve had threatened to go public. I followed her because I wanted to talk.”

“Did you cause the crash?”

“No.”

“Did Franklin?”

Adrian lowered his hands.

“I don’t know.”

I grabbed the front of his shirt.

“Wrong answer.”

“I don’t know!” he shouted. “Her brake line had been cut. I found out later.”

The room froze.

Elena whispered, “Cut?”

Adrian’s eyes filled with something dangerously close to shame.

“I covered it up.”

My hands loosened.

“You what?”

“I was afraid. Franklin said if the police dug into Northlake, everything would come out. The illegal trials. The money. The samples. Your businesses tied to mine. He said the entire Mercer structure would collapse.”

“And you chose the empire.”

Adrian looked away.

“Yes.”

I released him.

For the first time in my life, I understood how a man could hate someone he still remembered loving.

“Where are the samples?”

Adrian reached into his pocket slowly.

Prescott raised his weapon.

Adrian pulled out a brass key.

“Northlake has a sublevel not listed on the plans. Cold storage. Franklin kept the research material there.”

He set the key on the table.

“Genevieve’s archive number opens one of the cages.”