Renata lifted her chin.
“Because it was dissolved.”
Wesley turned another page.
A renewal certificate had been signed by Gil eleven months earlier.
The certificate expired thirty days after his death.
Beneath that clause was a successor provision.
Upon Gil Mercer’s death, authority to renew, modify, or terminate the company’s license transferred to the beneficiary named in Schedule C.
Schedule C was missing.
Renata laughed, but the sound was too sharp.
“There.
Incomplete.
Worthless.”
Trevor pointed at the recording drive inside the cabinet.
“Dad said to play that before anyone decided what was worthless.”
The drive connected to an old monitor on the workbench.
Trevor pressed the power button.
The screen flickered, then showed Gil Mercer seated in the same clean chair Wesley had noticed when he entered.
Gil looked smaller than he had at the funeral.
His hair was thin, his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows.
Behind him, Della’s drafting plates stood in numbered racks.
He looked directly into the camera.
“Wes,” he began, “if you’re seeing this, then I waited too long again.”
Wesley’s jaw tightened.
Renata moved toward the monitor, but Trevor stepped between her and the power cord.
Gil continued.
“Your mother and I started Mercer Works in this room.
I built what she drew.
She saw structures before anyone else could see them.
The interlocking stair system, the floating support grid, the panel joints that made our first tower possible—those were hers.”
On the video, Gil looked down at his hands.
“When she became ill, she transferred the design library and the Mercer mark into a trust.
She wanted the company to use them, but she did not want investors, creditors, or any future spouse of mine to sell them away from you.
She named me trustee until my death.
She named you after me.”
Renata whispered, “No.”
Gil’s recorded voice continued over her.
“I should have told you.
I should have defended her name.
Instead, after she died, I let people call me the sole founder because correcting them required me to speak about the part of my life I had destroyed.
Silence became easier.
Then silence became cowardice.”
Wesley did not look away from the screen.
The confession did not erase the locked gate, the missing photographs, or the night he left home with a duffel bag while his father stood in the hallway saying nothing.
But it placed those wounds beside something Wesley had never possessed before.
The truth.
Gil lifted a thin document toward the camera.
Its details were unreadable on the screen, but Wesley recognized the blue notary stamp.
“The original Schedule C is sealed beneath Della’s drafting table.
The brass key opens both the cabinet and the floor compartment.
Renata knows the company’s license must be renewed after my death.
She does not know who controls it.
I kept that from her because I heard her ask our finance team what it would cost to replace the Mercer systems and rebrand the company.
She was preparing for this before I was gone.”
Renata lunged for the monitor.
Trevor caught her wrist.
She slapped his hand away.
