The first page inside the folder did not contain money.
It contained Della Mercer’s full name.
Her signature appeared beneath a blue notary stamp, followed by Gil’s signature and the title of a document Wesley had never heard of: Mercer Works Licensing Trust.
Renata stared at it for half a second too long.
Then she reached for the folder.
Wesley closed it against his chest.
“Give me that,” she said.
He looked at the white folder still clenched in her hand.
The red RENEWAL tab was visible now.
“You first.”
Renata’s eyes hardened.
“Those papers belonged to your father.”
“This building belonged to my father.
Now it belongs to me.
Everything inside was conveyed with it.”
The outside lawyer remained on speaker.
“Mrs.
Mercer,” he said carefully, “I strongly advise you not to remove, damage, or conceal any material at that location.”
“You work for my company,” Renata snapped.
“I work for Mercer Works.
At the moment, those may not be the same thing.”
Trevor lowered his thermos.
Wesley saw his hand trembling.
Renata saw it too.
“You brought me here for this?” she asked him.
Trevor swallowed.
“Dad did.”
The workshop went quiet except for the hum of an old overhead light.
Trevor walked to the workbench and opened a shallow drawer.
Inside was an envelope addressed to him in Gil’s handwriting.
“He gave me this three months ago,” Trevor said.
“He told me that when he died, I was supposed to turn on the lights, wait for Wes, and make sure Renata didn’t get inside first.”
Renata’s face changed.
Her anger did not disappear, but something colder moved beneath it.
Fear.
Wesley opened the sealed folder again.
The trust document was followed by schedules of architectural drawings, joinery systems, modular staircase designs, facade patterns, and proprietary construction standards.
Some were old enough to have been drawn by hand.
Others had been updated through the years.
Every page carried an identifying number.
Every number matched a plate stored in the workshop’s flat metal drawers.
The outside lawyer asked Wesley to read the heading on the second schedule.
Wesley did.
“Licensed intellectual property and commercial marks.”
The lawyer exhaled.
“That is what I was afraid of.”
Renata recovered quickly.
“It’s obsolete paperwork,” she said.
“Gil incorporated the company decades ago.
Mercer Works owns its designs.”
The lawyer did not answer immediately.
Wesley heard typing through the phone.
“The operating company owns its equipment, contracts, real estate holdings, and construction subsidiaries,” the lawyer finally said.
“But state filings from the company’s first decade reference a separate licensing trust.
Our current financing documents assume Mercer Works has uninterrupted rights to the Mercer commercial mark and design library.
I have never seen the underlying trust instrument.”
