Chapter 15 - The Man Wearing My Face
Police flooded the front drive.
The man wearing my face disappeared into the trees before officers secured the road.
A bloodhound unit found fragments of skin-colored prosthetic material near the fence, but no vehicle, weapon, or clear trail.
He had planned the escape.
He had also known exactly where to look inside my suitcase.
That meant someone accessed my luggage before I left Singapore.
The conspiracy was not limited to my house, Clara’s family, or the Asheville property.
Someone had followed me across continents.
My mother sat on the foyer bench wrapped in a blanket.
The room looked almost unchanged from the moment I arrived.
Blue-gray water stains remained on the marble.
The bucket lay on its side.
Her soaked floral dress had been sealed in an evidence bag.
Clara stood in handcuffs near the staircase.
Her red dress was wrinkled. One heel had broken. Strands of dark hair hung around her face.
She no longer resembled the woman who believed she owned every person in the room.
But she was not defeated.
I could see it in the way her eyes followed each evidence bag.
She was calculating what the police had missed.
Vivian and Arthur had been separated for questioning.
Nathan was transported under guard.
Rosa remained alive but critical.
Eleanor had agreed to testify.
Every answer should have made the picture clearer.
Instead, the man in my face had shattered the center of it.
My mother touched my hand.
“What did he mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Her fingers tightened.
“Yes, you do.”
I looked at her.
Tears filled her eyes.
“Your father and I struggled to have children.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“He loved you.”
The sentence struck me harder than an accusation.
Loved.
Past tense.
Qualified.
“What are you saying?”
She lowered her voice.
“Robert was your father in every way that mattered.”
“Was he my biological father?”
Clara turned her head toward us.
She was listening.
My mother closed her eyes.
“No.”
The foyer seemed to narrow.
The open front door admitted cold evening air.
I remembered my father teaching me to drive, correcting my homework, standing in the rain during every high-school game even after his surgery.
None of that disappeared.
But the secret changed the shape of every document, every property claim, every threat.
“Who was?”
“I never knew his real name.”
I pulled my hand away.
“That’s not possible.”
“It was a fertility program. Private. Experimental.”
“Run by whom?”
Her eyes moved toward Vivian.
“Vale Medical Holdings.”
Clara laughed once.
Not because it was funny.
Because the truth had found a way to wound me too.
“You’re one of their projects,” she said.
An officer ordered her silent.
She ignored him.
“That’s why Arthur needed you alive. That’s why my mother chose you. It was never just the land.”
I moved closer.
“What do you know?”
Her chin lifted slightly.
A fragment of arrogance returned.
“Enough to know your father was not poisoned because of property.”
“Then why?”
“Because he discovered where you came from.”
“Who is the man wearing my face?”
Clara smiled through split composure.
“You think I know?”
“You recognized the technology.”
“I recognized the plan.”
“What plan?”
She glanced toward the evidence officers.
“Get these cuffs off me, and I’ll tell you.”
“No.”
“Then keep chasing a stranger who shares your blood.”
My mother gasped.
I stared at Clara.
“You said you didn’t know my biological father.”
“I didn’t say father.”
The distinction chilled me.
A detective approached carrying a transparent evidence sleeve.
“We recovered this from the torn suitcase lining.”
Inside was a corner of the blue folder the masked man had missed.
A laboratory seal remained visible.
MERCER-HX PATERNAL SERIES.
Beneath it was a handwritten note.
Daniel is not the only surviving male subject.
The detective turned the fragment over.
A list of identification numbers appeared on the back.
Twelve subjects.
Eleven marked deceased.
One marked active.
My number.
A second active notation had been added in different ink.
The name beside it was hidden beneath dried blood.
My mother stared at the fragment.
“I’ve seen that handwriting.”
“Whose?”
Before she answered, every light in the house went out.
The security system announced that the front door had been locked remotely.
Emergency lights glowed along the floor.
Clara stopped smiling.
“That isn’t supposed to happen.”
A television screen in the living room switched on by itself.
The image showed my mother kneeling on the marble hours earlier.
Clara stood over her holding the bucket.
The scene replayed from an angle none of the known cameras covered.
Someone else had been inside the house before I arrived.
The video continued beyond the moment I had witnessed.
After Clara dumped the water, a man stepped briefly into view behind the kitchen wall.
He wore my navy travel jacket.
My face.
My body.
He had been watching from inside the house while I stood outside the open door.
Then the recording cut to a live feed.
A room appeared on screen.
Rosa lay unconscious in a hospital bed.
Nathan sat beside her with his wrists restrained.
Behind them stood the masked man, now holding the blue folder.
He removed the prosthetic face.
The real face beneath it was not mine.
But I recognized him.
He was the Singapore regulator whose unexpected approval had sent me home one day early.
He opened the folder.
“Daniel,” he said, “Robert Mercer did not uncover your origin.”
He looked directly into the camera.
“He created it.”
Then he lifted a photograph showing my father beside twelve newborn boys.
One of them wore a hospital bracelet bearing my name.
Another wore the name Nathan Cole.
Nathan saw it on the monitor beside him and stopped breathing.
The regulator turned the photograph over.
A signature filled the back.
My mother stepped toward the screen.
“No,” she whispered.
The signature belonged to her.
Before I could ask why, the live feed shifted.
A second bed appeared beside Rosa’s.
The patient’s face was hidden beneath an oxygen mask.
The man removed it.
May you like
My father opened his eyes.
📖 Discover whether Robert Mercer survived his reported death—and why twelve newborn boys linked Daniel, Nathan, and the stolen land when CHAPTER 16 begins in PART 2. 👇
