Chapter 17 - Anna's Last Secret
Anna asked to speak with Ryan alone.
He refused.
"Emily stays."
Anna nodded.
"Fair."
She held Sophie for a moment, then handed her back to me.
"The trust wasn't only about company shares," Anna said.
Ryan waited.
"Your grandfather Mercer left me land outside Savannah. Waterfront land. Charles wanted it for a shipping project."
"What happened to it?"
"I refused to sell. Two weeks later, they called me unstable."
Ryan closed his eyes.
Another motive.
Another layer.
Anna continued.
"The deed was supposed to pass to you if I became legally incapacitated. But Charles couldn't access it because of one condition."
"What condition?"
"You had to be told the truth about me before your thirtieth birthday."
Ryan laughed bitterly.
"That didn't happen."
"No. Which means the land never transferred to Carter control. It stayed in a protected Mercer trust."
Miriam later confirmed it.
The property was now worth tens of millions.
And because Ryan had never been properly notified, legal control remained with Anna.
Margaret's crimes had not gained her the land.
They had only delayed its return.
Then Anna told us the part that mattered most.
"I don't want it."
Ryan frowned.
"What?"
"I want it used for something they can't turn into another monument to themselves."
She proposed a legal advocacy center for women wrongfully committed, coerced, or stripped of custody through fraudulent medical claims.
I felt tears rise.
Ryan nodded.
"Do it."
For the first time, Anna smiled like a woman planning a future instead of surviving a past.
Then Detective Brooks called.
She had finished reviewing Harlan's files.
There was one more planned patient.
May you like
Not me.
Jessica.
