Chapter 15 - The Open Door
The afternoon sun filtered through the sheer curtains of the small apartment living room, casting a soft, golden glow over the hardwood floor where Lily sat quietly coloring in a new picture book. Julian stood near the kitchen counter, his phone still resting on the surface with Marcus listening in from the other end. Across from him stood Clara, her posture relaxed yet carrying an unspoken weight that had nothing to do with the Sterling family's downfall.
"If Arthur wasn't the head of the family," Julian said, his voice hard and level, "then who was?"
Clara walked over to the window, looking down at the quiet street below where the unmarked sedan had finally pulled away from the curb. "My mother," Clara said simply. "Beatrice Sterling. The woman the world forgot twenty years ago when she supposedly retired from public life."
Marcus’s voice crackled loudly from the open speaker on the counter. "Beatrice Sterling? The founder of the Sterling Foundation? She died of pneumonia in a Swiss clinic back in nineteen-ninety-five!"
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"That was the narrative Arthur and the board constructed to keep her control absolute without public scrutiny," Clara exp
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