Chapter 7 - A Name From Before
Maya had not spoken to her mother in eleven years. When she finally called, Rosa answered on the fourth ring.
“Mija?”
Maya forgot every question she had prepared.
“How do you know the Mercer family?”
Silence.
Then: “Who told you?”
Maya gripped the phone. “So you do know them.”
Rosa began to cry.
Julian, Leo, and Marcus sat across the library, listening on speaker.
“I worked for Anna,” Rosa said. “Before you were grown. I cleaned her office at the foundation.”
Julian leaned forward. “Did you know my wife?”
“She was kind to me.”
“Did she ever mention Eleanor?”
The crying stopped.
“Yes.”
Leo’s face hardened.
Rosa continued. “Eleanor was not part of the family then. She worked in corporate events. Anna believed she was having an affair with someone in finance.”
“Who?” Julian asked.
“I never knew his full name. Victor, maybe. Or Vincent.”
Maya looked at Marcus. “Miles Grant’s middle name is Victor.”
Marcus checked his phone.
“Miles Victor Grant.”
Rosa inhaled sharply.
“Anna recorded them once.”
Every person in the room froze.
“Recorded what?” Maya asked.
“A conversation. She gave me a little digital recorder and told me to hide it if anything happened to her.”
Maya felt cold.
“What did you do with it?”
“I panicked. After the crash, a man came to my apartment and said he knew where my children slept. I hid the recorder and moved us away.”
“Where is it?”
Rosa hesitated.
“In an old sewing machine. At your aunt’s storage unit.”
Maya shut her eyes.
Eleven years of anger at a mother she thought had abandoned every good thing in her life.
And Rosa had been running from the same people now threatening Tomas.
Julian stood. “We’re getting that recorder.”
Marcus was already calling for a vehicle.
But Rosa suddenly said, “No. Listen to me. There’s something else.”
May you like
“What?”
“Anna told me if Julian ever married Eleanor, it meant Eleanor had already won the first part of her plan.”
