Chapter 7 - THE COMPUTER IN CHARLES'S ROOM
The west wing computer had been wiped.
Not professionally.
Sloppily.
Enough to suggest urgency.
Richard’s forensic team recovered login fragments.
One user:
CMERCER_ADMIN.
Another:
SMERCER_TEMP.
Serena stared.
“That could be anyone.”
“Your initials,” Elias said.
“So?”
Victoria interrupted.
“Stop.”
They found more.
The SMERCER_TEMP account accessed payment authorization pages fourteen times over two years.
Serena denied knowing it existed.
Richard believed she might be telling the truth.
Because the access pattern occurred mostly between 2 and 4 a.m.
Serena rarely stayed at Mercer House overnight.
Victoria did.
That looked bad.
Then a third pattern emerged.
Remote login from a private network assigned to Charles’s personal nurse.
Victoria frowned.
“Charles didn’t have a nurse.”
Richard looked at her.
“Not officially.”
Then Victoria remembered.
A man.
Middle-aged.
Soft-spoken.
Visited Charles twice a week during the final year.
Charles introduced him as a physical therapist.
Name:
David Knox.
No such licensed therapist existed.
Elias said:
“Security guy?”
Richard shook his head.
“Private investigator.”
Victoria stared.
Charles had hired an investigator inside his own house.
Why?
Richard pulled Knox’s contract.
Mandate:
Monitor unauthorized financial access and household coercion.
Serena laughed bitterly.
“He spied on us.”
“Yes.”
“Did he find anything?”
Knox disappeared two weeks before Charles died.
No forwarding address.
No contact.
His final invoice included one handwritten line:
S.M. IS NOT THE PRIMARY RISK.
Serena grabbed the page.
“See?”
Victoria looked at her.
“Not primary doesn’t mean innocent.”
Serena’s eyes narrowed.
Then she read the next line.
V.M. MAY BE COMPROMISED WITHOUT KNOWING.
Victoria froze.
Everyone looked at her.
“What does that mean?” Elias asked.
She genuinely did not know.
Richard checked her devices.
Her phone had been cloned.
Her email accessed.
Her hospital records obtained.
Someone had been using Victoria’s identity.
For months.
That explained the forged medical power.
The odd signatures.
Maybe the financial logins.
Serena looked annoyed rather than relieved.
“If she’s compromised, she can’t be trusted.”
Elias said:
“Neither can you.”
Serena turned.
“Why?”
“Because you keep treating every clue like a chair you can sit in.”
Victoria almost smiled.
Then Richard found the device used to clone Victoria’s phone.
Purchase record.
Mercer Foundation expense card.
Authorized by Serena.
Her face went white.
“I didn’t buy that.”
Richard said:
“Your card did.”
“Who had access?”
“My assistant.”
“Name?”
Serena hesitated.
“Lydia Vale.”
Victoria knew Lydia.
Serena’s closest aide.
Loyal for nine years.
Always invisible in photographs.
Always present in rooms.
Richard called her.
No answer.
Her apartment was empty.
Her Mercer laptop missing.
Serena looked genuinely terrified.
“Lydia wouldn’t.”
Elias asked:
“Wouldn’t what?”
Serena whispered:
“Betray me.”
Victoria looked at her.
“Maybe you’re finally asking the right question.”
Then Richard’s phone buzzed.
Police had found Lydia’s car at the train station.
Inside the trunk:
David Knox’s missing files.
And one photograph of Charles Mercer meeting Elias secretly three months before his death.
Elias went pale.
Victoria turned.
“You said you hadn’t seen him in twenty years.”
May you like
He looked at the floor.
“I lied.”
