Chapter 9 - The Call in My Mother’s Voice
Ryan answered the phone on speaker.
For two seconds, there was only ocean wind.
Then my mother’s voice said, “Clara, do not let Leonard open the red envelope.”
My legs nearly failed.
It was her voice exactly.
Soft. Controlled. Slightly breathless on the first word of every sentence.
Ryan stared at the phone.
Vanessa crossed herself.
Daniel looked at me.
“Is that really her?”
“My mother is dead.”
The voice continued.
“If you are hearing this, the yacht protocol was activated, and someone has attempted to use my confession against you.”
A recording.
Scheduled years earlier.
My necklace had triggered more than an alert. It had opened a chain of messages my mother built before she died.
Ryan’s grip tightened around the phone.
My mother said, “Leonard Price is not Clara’s father.”
From the locked engine room, Leonard shouted, “Turn it off!”
Ryan’s eyes moved toward the speaker.
The recording continued.
“Leonard believed he was the father because I needed him to believe it. He had discovered the original Mercer trust and intended to control my child before she was born.”
I pressed both hands to my belly.
The story was repeating itself.
My mother had hidden my paternity to protect me.
I had hidden nothing, and Ryan had built his plan around my unborn child.
“Clara’s biological father,” my mother said, “was a man Leonard could not threaten while he was alive.”
A pause followed.
Then static swallowed part of the next sentence.
Only three words came through clearly.
“…served with Thomas…”
My father, Thomas Mercer.
The recording cut out.
Ryan shook the phone.
“That’s it?”
Another message appeared.
SECOND SEGMENT REQUIRES RED ENVELOPE CODE.
Leonard began pounding against the engine room door.
“Do not open it!”
I looked at Ryan.
“Where is the envelope?”
He slipped the phone into his pocket.
“In Locker Three.”
“Then take us to the marina.”
“That was already the plan.”
“Without burning the yacht.”
His mouth curled.
“You are not in a position to make demands.”
I walked toward him.
He raised the remote.
“One more step.”
I stopped.
The baby shifted again, harder this time.
My lower back tightened.
Not a contraction.
I prayed it was not.
Ryan looked at my belly.
“You need a doctor.”
“You threw me off a yacht.”
“I know.”
“Then stop pretending my safety matters now.”
His eyes hardened.
“Your survival matters if it protects me.”
There was the truth.
No more charm.
No more marriage.
Only leverage.
Vanessa stepped beside me.
“What happens to me?”
Ryan looked almost bored.
“You help Clara make the statement.”
“And afterward?”
“We leave.”
“Together?”
He hesitated half a second.
Vanessa saw it.
“You never planned to take me.”
“Do not make this emotional.”
She laughed once, sharp and broken.
“You pushed your pregnant wife into the ocean for money, but I’m emotional?”
Ryan’s thumb moved over the remote.
Emily spoke from beside the railing.
“The life raft wiring is fake.”
Everyone looked at her.
Ryan’s face changed.
Emily continued.
“He connected the release to the upper-deck lights, not the raft.”
Ryan strode toward her.
“You should have stayed quiet.”
I stepped between them.
He stopped inches from me.
Ocean spray moved across his face.
“You will not hit her.”
“Clara.”
“You will not touch another woman while hiding behind that remote.”
His jaw flexed.
For the first time since I climbed aboard, he looked at me not as a victim but as a threat.
Daniel leaned close behind me.
“If the raft wiring is fake, the remote controls something else.”
Ryan heard him.
His thumb pressed down.
A muffled explosion sounded from below deck.
The yacht shook.
Smoke burst from a vent near the stern.
Leonard screamed through the intercom.
Ryan smiled.
“The remote works.”
Emily’s face paled.
“That was the auxiliary fuel line.”
Daniel stared toward the smoke.
“You punctured the engine-room suppression system.”
“Leonard wanted a fire,” Ryan said. “I gave him one.”
The engine-room speaker filled with coughing.
Leonard shouted, “Open the door!”
Ryan did not move.
I looked at him.
“Your mother’s recording named Leonard.”
“It also named my father.”
My breath caught.
“What?”
Ryan stepped closer.
“The man who served with Thomas Mercer was my father, Michael Hale.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Then Daniel whispered, “Uncle Thomas’s security chief.”
Ryan nodded.
“He died in the same plane crash as Thomas.”
The foundation’s private jet had gone down twelve years earlier.
My father and six employees died.
The crash that made me the sole head of the Mercer estate.
Ryan held my gaze.
“My father was protecting yours because of what they found in Leonard’s accounts.”
“Then why help Leonard?”
“Because he had the only evidence that the crash was not an accident.”
Smoke thickened behind us.
The locked engine-room door began glowing red around its edges.
Leonard stopped pounding.
A different sound came through the intercom.
A woman coughing.
Emily stared toward the speaker.
“There’s someone else in there.”
Daniel looked at me.
“The technician.”
“No,” Leonard shouted through the smoke. “Clara, it is your mother’s attorney.”
Helen’s voice came weakly through the intercom.
“He is telling the truth.”
My necklace’s return channel went silent.
May you like
Helen had been aboard the yacht the entire time.
📖 Discover why Helen Avery hid inside the engine room—and what she knows about the plane crash that killed Clara’s father in CHAPTER 10. 👇
