Chapter 7 - The Voice from San Antonio
The revelation hit me like a physical blow. Julian was four years older than me. My only memory of him was a blurred collection of childhood fragments: him teaching me how to skip stones across the creek, his laughter, and then the horrific summer afternoon when sirens wailed through our neighborhood, and Mother told me Julian had slipped under the dark waters of the reservoir.
We held a memorial service with an empty casket. Diane had wept openly, draped in black lace, while my father stared blankly ahead, completely hollowed out by grief.
"Why would Brooke search for Julian now?" I demanded, my hands gripping the edge of the bed. "If Diane hid this for over two decades, why dig it up?"
"Because the trust fund has a twenty-five-year sunset clause, Nolan," Eliza explained, her voice steadying as she laid out the facts she had spent months uncovering. "Your grandfather wrote the original will. He stated that on Julian’s thirty-seventh birthday—which was last Tuesday—the entirety of the primary estate, including the ancestral land, the timber rights, and the downtown commercial properties, automatically transfers to the eldest living male heir. If no heir claims it within thirty days, the assets default entirely to Diane."
"Diane wanted to make sure he was dead before the thirty days expired," I realized, a wave of pure disgust washing over me.
"Brooke found him first," Eliza said. "She thought she could blackmail him. She wanted him to sign a quitclaim deed transferring his rights directly to her instead of Diane. Brooke wanted to cut your mother out completely. But when Julian refused to sign, things turned violent."
My phone rang loudly from the bedside table.
I snatched it up. It was Evan Pierce's number.
"Nolan," Evan's voice came through, strained and breathless over the line. "We have a critical situation."
"What happened? Are Diane and Brooke in the processing center?"
"Diane is in a cell," Evan said, background sirens wailing over the receiver. "Brooke’s transport vehicle was intercepted on Route 9."
My blood ran cold. "Intercepted? By whom?"
"A black heavy-duty Ford F-350 rammed the transport van off the shoulder two miles outside town," Evan shouted over the chaos. "Two armed men neutralized the marshals with flashbangs and extracted Brooke. They left the federal driver unconscious."
"The private contractors," I said, my knuckles turning white against the plastic of the phone. "The men Brooke hired from San Antonio."
"They aren't just contractors, Captain Mercer," Evan said darkly. "We just ran their plates from the dashcam footage. The vehicle belongs to a private security outfit registered to Julian Mercer."
I stared at the receiver, stunned into absolute silence.
May you like
"Did you hear me, Nolan?" Evan urged. "Your brother didn't run from Brooke's men. He bought them off. Julian is here in the county. And he just took his sister."
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