Chapter 8 - DR. SLOAN
Peter Sloan refused Lucas’s calls.
He did not refuse a subpoena.
Two days later, he sat across from Priya in a conference room and looked like a man watching his career collapse in real time.
“I never diagnosed Hannah Mercer,” he admitted.
“Then why did you write that letter?”
“Evelyn said the family needed guidance.”
“Guidance is not a diagnosis.”
“I know.”
“She gave you fake messages.”
“I believed they were real.”
Priya slid a printed email across the table.
In it, Evelyn had written: I need language strong enough for an emergency petition. Please don’t mention that you haven’t met her yet.
Sloan stared at the email.
Lucas sat beside Hannah, fighting the urge to speak.
Priya asked, “Did Evelyn offer you anything?”
“No.”
“Think carefully.”
Sloan rubbed his forehead.
“She said she could recommend me for a board seat at the Mercer Foundation.”
Lucas’s father had created that foundation before his death.
Evelyn still controlled three board appointments.
Hannah gave a humorless laugh.
“So my sanity was worth a board seat.”
Sloan flinched.
After the meeting, Lucas received an email from the foundation’s accountant, Martin Dale.
Subject: You need to see this before your mother does anything else.
Attached was a scan of a trust document.
Lucas recognized it immediately.
His father had established a two-million-dollar education and care trust for his first grandchild.
Sophie.
Lucas and Hannah were co-trustees.
Evelyn had complained about the arrangement when Sophie was born, but Lucas thought it was pride.
Martin’s email said otherwise.
Three weeks earlier, Evelyn had submitted draft paperwork requesting that Hannah be removed as co-trustee due to “mental incapacity.”
A second document named Evelyn as successor trustee.
At the bottom was Hannah’s signature.
Forged again.
Lucas scrolled lower.
There was one more page.
An authorization to move $480,000 into an “emergency family protection account.”
The receiving account belonged to a company Lucas had never heard of.
But Hannah had.
May you like
She pointed at the name.
“That company is owned by your mother’s brother.”
