Chapter 8 - The Recording Nathan Tried to Erase
The second-to-last audio file began nine minutes before the first.
My mother sat beside me in the back seat of a police cruiser while an officer arranged transport to the hospital. Clara remained inside the house with another officer.
I played the recording through headphones.
Clara’s heels clicked across the kitchen floor.
Nathan spoke quietly.
“You said the box contained property documents.”
“That’s what Margaret told Rosa.”
“This is a toxicology report.”
“What does it say?”
“Robert Mercer had digoxin in his blood.”
My father had never been prescribed digoxin.
I knew the word because he had worked in pharmaceutical distribution before retiring. He once explained how certain heart medications could become lethal at the wrong dose.
Clara’s voice sharpened.
“Could it have caused his heart attack?”
“Yes.”
“Then why wasn’t it in the autopsy?”
“Because this isn’t the official report. It’s a private lab analysis.”
Paper shifted.
Nathan continued.
“There’s also a bank ledger.”
“Whose account?”
“I don’t know. Payments were made to someone with the initials E.C.”
A pause.
Then Clara said, “Eleanor Cole.”
Nathan stopped breathing.
Eleanor was his mother.
I had met her once at a charity dinner. She had worked as a private nurse before retiring.
My father died at home.
A private nurse had been with him during his final week.
I had never known her name.
Nathan spoke again, lower now.
“My mother did not kill Robert Mercer.”
“Then why did he pay her?”
“He didn’t.”
“The ledger says he did.”
“No. Look at the routing number. The account belonged to Vale Medical Holdings.”
Clara cursed.
The name meant nothing to me, but her reaction suggested it should.
Nathan continued.
“Your family owned this company.”
“My grandfather invested in hospitals.”
“This payment was issued three days before Robert died.”
“To your mother.”
“I need to talk to her.”
“You need to finish what we started.”
“I agreed to help establish Margaret’s incapacity. I did not agree to cover a homicide.”
“You prescribed the drugs. You signed the report. You are already involved.”
“That was before I saw this.”
Clara’s voice became quiet.
“You’re not leaving me now.”
“I am if your family killed Daniel’s father.”
A chair scraped.
Then Nathan said, “Give me the box.”
“No.”
“Clara.”
“No one gets it until the land transfers.”
“The land is worthless compared to this evidence.”
“Not to me.”
The recording skipped.
When it resumed, Rosa was shouting.
“You should be ashamed.”
Clara answered, “You were paid to clean, not listen.”
“I’m calling Daniel.”
A struggle followed.
Rosa cried out.
Nathan yelled, “Stop!”
The final sound was my mother pounding on a door.
The file ended.
I removed the headphones.
My hands were steady.
That frightened me more than shaking would have.
My father’s death was no longer a distant tragedy.
It was connected to Clara’s family, Nathan’s mother, and the land they were trying to steal from Mom.
The officer beside the cruiser asked whether I was all right.
“No.”
It was the first honest answer I had given all day.
At the hospital, doctors documented dehydration, bruising, chemical sedation, and skin damage caused by prolonged exposure to cleaning agents.
The wounds on Mom’s hands were not from ordinary housework.
Someone had forced her to scrub with industrial chemicals without gloves.
When the nurse asked how long it had been happening, Mom whispered, “Since Clara found the key.”
“What key?” I asked.
“The key to your father’s desk at the old house.”
The Asheville property.
My father’s office had remained locked since his death. Mom refused to let anyone alter it.
Clara wanted the land because something was still inside that office.
Not merely because developers valued the acreage.
Marcus called.
He had discovered that Vale Medical Holdings was not an old company.
It had been reactivated six months ago.
The registered manager was Clara.
The company had submitted a confidential purchase option on the Asheville property.
The buyer was not a developer.
It was Nathan’s clinic.
Before Marcus could explain why a psychiatric facility wanted my father’s land, an emergency alert appeared in Mom’s hospital chart.
A legal guardian had requested her immediate transfer to Nathan’s facility.
The guardian’s name was Daniel Mercer.
My name.
May you like
My electronic signature appeared beneath the request.
📖 Find out how Clara forged my identity—and why hospital security believed I was the dangerous man trying to abduct my own mother in CHAPTER 9. 👇
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