Chapter 6 - Unmasking the Embezzlement
The formal depositions for the civil matter of *Sloane Mercer v. Evander Mercer, Delphine Mercer, and Vesper Mercer* took place six weeks later in the primary conference room of Vance & Sterling.
Six weeks had transformed the landscape entirely.
Vesper had spent four days in the Loudoun County Adult Detention Center before my parents managed to scrape together the bail by liquidating Evander’s entire 401(k)—incurring massive early-withdrawal penalties and a catastrophic tax liability. When she was released, she had emerged into a world where her digital footprint had been eradicated. Her accounts were gone, her sponsors were suing her for breach of morality clauses, and her legal fees were mounting by the hour.
The criminal grand jury had returned an indictment on all three counts: Aggravated Malicious Wounding, Felony Assault, and Wire Fraud.
Now came the civil reckoning.
The Mercer family had been forced to retain a cut-rate defense attorney from a strip mall in Annandale named Harold Higgins—a man whose rumpled polyester suit and sweat-stained collar made him look like he had lost his last twelve trials by default.
Across the sixteen-foot glass table sat Evander, Delphine, and Vesper.
Vesper looked hollowed out. Her hair was pulled back in an aggressive, severe bun, her skin gray and patchy without her professional treatments. She sat with her arms pinned against her ribs, her eyes fixed on the legal pad in front of her, refusing to look at me.
Delphine looked ten years older, the skin around her mouth set in a permanent, bitter pucker. Evander sat with his shoulders rounded, his hands trembling as he turned a cheap plastic pen over and over on the faux-wood surface.
I sat between Declan and Michael Vance. I wore a tailored ivory blazer—a deliberate, quiet echo of the wedding dress they had ruined—and my hair was styled to leave the healing scar above my ear visible. The stitches were gone, leaving a thin, pale line of pink tissue that cut through the hairline like a surveyor’s mark.
“We are on the record,” the court reporter announced, her fingers hovering over the stenotype machine. “Deposition of Evander Mercer, Volume One.”
Michael Vance didn't waste time with pleasantries. He adjusted his glasses, opened the first of twelve thick exhibit binders, and looked at my father with the cold, scientific detachment of an entomologist preparing to pin a beetle to a board.
“Mr. Mercer,” Michael began, “I hand you what has been marked as Plaintiff’s Exhibit 14. Can you identify this document?”
Evander looked down at the paper. His reading glasses shook in his hand.
“It... it appears to be a corporate resolution for *Mercer Heritage Holdings, LLC*, dated October 14, 2012.”
“Is that your signature on page three?”
“Yes.”
“And whose signature appears directly below yours on the line marked *Beneficiary Relinquishment*?”
Evander swallowed hard. His tongue flicked out to wet his dry lips. “It says Sloane Mercer.”
“Did you see Sloane Mercer sign that document, Mr. Mercer?”
Higgins, their lawyer, cleared his throat weakly. “Object to the form of the question.”
“Answer the question, Mr. Mercer,” Michael said, his voice dropping into that quiet, deadly register. “You are under oath, subject to the penalties of perjury. Did you see Sloane Mercer sign this document?”
Evander looked at his lawyer. Higgins was staring at his own fingernails.
“I... I don't recall the specific moment of execution,” Evander whispered. “It was twelve years ago.”
“Let me refresh your recollection,” Michael said smoothly, sliding another document across the glass. “Plaintiff’s Exhibit 15 is a certified copy of your daughter’s college transcript from Virginia Tech, along with her time-card records from the *Blacksburg Homestyle Diner* for October 14, 2012.”
Michael leaned forward, his finger tapping the paper.
“These records demonstrate that on October 14, 2012, between the hours of 6:00 AM and 11:30 PM, Sloane Mercer was three hundred and twenty miles away in Montgomery County, Virginia, attending a macroeconomics lecture and subsequently bussing tables for eight hours. The document in Exhibit 14 was notarized in McLean, Virginia, at 2:15 PM on that exact day.”
Michael paused, letting the silence stretch until the hum of the air conditioner sounded like a jet engine.
“Did Sloane Mercer sign that document, Mr. Mercer?”
Evander’s hands dropped into his lap. He looked like an empty coat hanging on a peg.
“No,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry, I didn't hear that,” Michael said sharply. “The court reporter needs an audible answer.”
“No,” Evander said, his voice breaking entirely. “She didn't sign it.”
“Who signed it, Mr. Mercer?”
Evander looked at his wife. Delphine was staring straight ahead, her jaw clenched so tightly that her facial muscles were vibrating.
“I did,” Evander said.
“You forged your eighteen-year-old daughter’s signature on a document stripping her of her beneficial interest in a three-million-dollar trust fund?”
“Object!” Higgins bleated. “Argumentative!”
“It’s a direct factual inquiry,” Michael countered without looking at Higgins. “Did you forge her signature to take control of her settlement money?”
“I did it to manage the family assets!” Evander cried, his composure shattering like glass. “She was eighteen! She didn't know anything about money! She was going to college! We needed to protect the capital!”
“You protected the capital,” Michael said, opening Exhibit 18, “by spending four hundred and eighty thousand dollars over the next five years on your older daughter’s pageant expenses, clothing allowances, and a luxury vehicle?”
Vesper flinched as if she had been slapped.
“Leave me out of this,” she hissed, her voice venomous. “I was a child! I didn't know where the money came from!”
Michael turned his head slowly, his eyes locking onto Vesper with terrifying focus.
“We will get to you in Volume Two, Miss Mercer,” Michael said quietly. “Particularly regarding the three hundred and twenty thousand dollars in direct distributions you received from *Mercer Heritage Holdings* between your twenty-first and twenty-fifth birthdays—distributions that were deposited into your personal checking account and used to purchase designer accessories that you then claimed on your federal tax returns as ‘unreimbursed business expenses.’”
Vesper went entirely white.
May you like
She looked at her mother. But Delphine had nothing left to offer. The fortress of lies they had lived in for three decades was being methodically dismantled, screw by screw, ledger by ledger, right before their eyes.
***
