Chapter 2 - My Mother Had Been a Mercer
My mother’s real name was Anna Elizabeth Mercer.
I learned that at 1:17 the next morning in the penthouse suite of the Grand Regent Hotel.
I was sitting across from my grandfather with an ice pack pressed against my cheek while two attorneys stood near the windows and Helena remained downstairs somewhere surrounded by security.
Harrison had asked her to leave.
She refused.
He had hotel security remove her.
Apparently billionaires have family arguments exactly like everyone else.
They simply have better elevators.
I stared at the birth certificate Harrison placed before me.
Anna Elizabeth Mercer.
Born in New York City.
Father: Harrison James Mercer.
Mother: Margaret Louise Mercer.
“This is impossible,” I whispered.
Harrison looked exhausted.
“Your mother changed her name when she left.”
“Why?”
His eyes dropped.
“Because of me.”
He told me Anna was his youngest child.
Brilliant.
Stubborn.
Funny.
She studied literature instead of business, which apparently caused the first of many fights with her father.
Harrison had two other children.
Richard, the eldest.
And Caroline.
Anna was sixteen years younger than Richard and nine years younger than Caroline.
“Your grandmother died when Anna was seventeen.”
Harrison paused.
“I handled grief badly.”
That was billionaire language for becoming controlling.
He expected Anna to join Mercer Holdings.
She wanted to teach.
He wanted her dating men from “appropriate families.”
She fell in love with a public-school history teacher named Benjamin Carter.
My father.
I blinked.
“My father wasn’t in the military?”
“No.”
Every childhood story inside my head shifted.
Mom had told me Dad died overseas.
Harrison shook his head.
“Benjamin died in a car accident outside Philadelphia when you were three.”
My throat tightened.
“Why would she lie?”
“I think she was afraid.”
“Of you?”
His silence answered.
He told me that twenty-eight years earlier, Anna announced she was marrying Benjamin.
Harrison objected.
He called Benjamin opportunistic.
Anna walked out.
Harrison assumed she would return after a few weeks.
She didn’t.
“I was proud,” he said.
“That’s one word for it.”
He nodded.
“I deserve that.”
He sent lawyers.
She returned everything.
Money.
Car.
Credit cards.
Then the letters stopped.
“I wrote for years.”
“So did she.”
Harrison stared at me.
“What?”
“My mother kept copies.”
His hands tightened.
“She wrote you constantly when I was little.”
“I never received them.”
I thought about the box of letters still sitting in my mother’s storage unit in Pennsylvania.
“I saw returned envelopes.”
Harrison’s face changed.
“Returned by whom?”
“They said the family requested no contact.”
He stood.
“I never requested that.”
One of the attorneys spoke.
“Mr. Mercer.”
Harrison ignored him.
“Did the envelopes have initials?”
I thought back.
Some did.
R.M.
Richard Mercer.
His eldest son.
My uncle.
The man currently serving as CEO of Mercer Holdings.
Harrison closed his eyes.
“Oh, Richard.”
I felt cold.
“What did he do?”
“We don’t know yet.”
But he clearly suspected.
The trust made everything more complicated.
When my grandmother Margaret died, she left equal family trusts for all three children.
Richard.
Caroline.
Anna.
Anna’s trust contained twenty-two percent of a holding company controlling Mercer Hotels.
When she left the family, she could not immediately liquidate those shares.
The trust remained intact.
According to Harrison, the assets were supposed to pass to Anna’s children.
Me.
“Then why did Helena say there was no trust?”
He stared toward the door.
“That is a question I intend to ask.”
Helena was Harrison’s second wife.
He married her six years after Anna left.
She had been a corporate attorney.
And, more importantly, she had supervised parts of the Mercer estate structure for nearly two decades.
My mother’s trust should have been impossible for her not to know about.
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
“How much is twenty-two percent worth?”
Nobody answered immediately.
That told me the number was ridiculous.
Harrison finally said, “Depending on valuation, approximately nine hundred million dollars.”
I almost dropped the ice pack.
“No.”
“Emily—”
“No.”
“I understand—”
“No, you absolutely do not.”
I stood.
“I owe eighty-seven thousand dollars in student loans.”
One attorney looked down, perhaps to hide a reaction.
“My mother clipped coupons. She worked summers. She delayed cancer treatments for three weeks because she was worried about medical bills.”
Harrison’s face collapsed.
“And you’re telling me nearly a billion dollars was sitting somewhere with her name on it?”
“It should have been.”
“Should have?”
He looked toward his attorneys.
Five years after Anna left, certain trust documents were amended.
According to Mercer records, Anna voluntarily surrendered her beneficial rights.
The assets transferred into another family entity.
That entity was controlled by Richard.
The paperwork carried Anna’s notarized signature.
“It’s fake,” I said.
“We don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“Because Mom kept everything.”
I called my mother obsessive because she saved receipts from 2003.
Tax returns.
Lease agreements.
School documents.
Medical bills.
Every legal paper she ever signed.
“If she surrendered an inheritance, she would have kept a copy.”
Harrison sat back down.
“We need those files.”
“I’m not handing you anything.”
“Emily.”
“I met you six hours ago.”
That stopped him.
“You may be my grandfather.”
I pointed toward the ballroom below.
“But your wife hit me, your son may have intercepted my mother’s letters, and now I’m being told someone possibly forged her signature to steal almost a billion dollars.”
One attorney coughed.
“It sounds worse when you say it that way.”
I stared at him.
“It sounds exactly as bad as it is.”
Harrison almost smiled.
Then the smile disappeared.
“You’re right.”
He gave me the name of an independent attorney.
Sarah Coleman.
No connection to Mercer Holdings.
“If you trust nobody else, start with her.”
I left the hotel at three in the morning.
By sunrise, the video of Helena knocking me down had been viewed fourteen million times.
By noon, people had identified me.
By two, reporters were outside my apartment.
By three, my hospital asked me to take temporary leave for my own safety.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
A man spoke.
“Emily Carter?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Richard Mercer.”
My uncle.
His voice was calm.
“I think my father has told you a very emotional version of old events.”
“I think your wife’s stepmother slapped me to the floor.”
“Helena isn’t my mother.”
“Wonderful. Your family tree is already improving.”
He ignored that.
“We should meet.”
“Why?”
“To protect you.”
I almost laughed.
“From what?”
“From Harrison.”
I went quiet.
Richard continued.
“My father doesn’t want a granddaughter.”
“What does he want?”
“Your signature.”
“On what?”
“The trust.”
My pulse quickened.
Then Richard said something that contradicted everything Harrison had told me.
“Emily, your mother didn’t lose nine hundred million dollars.”
I gripped the phone.
“What?”
“She took something far more dangerous when she left.”
“What?”
He paused.
“Evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
May you like
Richard lowered his voice.
“That the Mercer fortune was built on a crime.”
