Chapter 6
Valeria opened the manila folder, her eyes scanning the itemized receipts and flight logs Vance had laid out. The meticulous detail was staggering. Every lie Julian and Clara had spun over the past two years had been systematically cataloged, verified, and weaponized.
"My father is thorough," Valeria murmured, a faint smile touching the corners of her lips.
"Your father loves you," Vance corrected gently. "And he despises incompetence disguised as ambition. But this isn't just about Julian and Clara anymore. There's a broader corporate implication tied to the firm Julian worked for. The CEO, Robert Vance—no relation to me, thankfully—was knee-deep in these fraudulent transactions."
Valeria looked up sharply, her artistic detachment instantly replaced by her razor-sharp corporate acumen.
"Robert Vance is tied to the embezzlement?" she asked, her tone shifting into executive mode. "He’s on the board of Sterling Holdings."
"He was," Vance corrected, emphasizing the past tense with lethal precision. "The board voted him out at dawn this morning. Your father engineered the emergency quorum at midnight. Sterling Holdings is absorbing the subsidiary, and a complete restructuring is underway. Your father wants you to take the empty seat on the board."
Valeria stared at the lawyer in stunned silence. The board of Sterling Holdings was an elite, fiercely guarded inner circle of global real estate and finance titans. Stepping into that arena meant stepping directly into the public eye on a massive scale.
"My father wants me to take a board seat?" Valeria repeated, testing the weight of the words. "He knows I haven't worked in corporate governance since I married Julian."
"He also knows you single-handedly audited Julian's hidden portfolios without waking a single alarm," Vance countered smoothly. "You have the mind for it, Valeria. You just let Julian dim your light to make himself feel adequate."
Before Valeria could process the monumental proposition, her phone rang again. This time, it wasn't a text message. The screen lit up with a direct call from an unblocked, restricted line—Arthur Sterling himself.
Valeria hesitated for a single heartbeat before sliding her thumb across the screen and pressing the device to her ear.
May you like
"Dad," she said evenly.
"Valeria," Arthur’s voice came through, remarkably warm yet unmistakably resolute. "Marcus has delivered the papers, I assume. I don't want an answer right now. Just clear your schedule for tonight. We are having dinner at the Manhattan Club. And bring your portfolio. It’s time you saw what you're truly capable of building."
