Chapter 12 - Page Forty-Two
The heavy oak door clicked shut, sealing Ivy inside the opulent, suffocating silence of the master suite. Her hands trembled as she walked slowly toward the coffee table where Jonathan had left the gold-embossed dossier. The heavy leather binding felt cold against her fingertips.
She opened it, the thick parchment pages turning with a soft rustle until she reached page forty-two.
At the top of the page was a certified bank transfer receipt dated twenty years ago, bearing a signature that made Ivy’s breath catch in her throat. It was signed by Arthur Sterling—her beloved uncle, the man who had raised her like a father after her parents' untimely deaths, the man who had supposedly protected her from the corporate wolves.
Transfer Amount: $15,000,000. Source: Sterling Enterprises R&D Fund. Destination: Offshore Account – Shell Corporation controlled by Arthur Sterling.
Below the receipt was a transcribed audio recording of a conversation between Arthur and Eleanor Vanderbilt, dated the exact night her father’s company collapsed.
“If we leak the forged embezzlement charges against my brother, he’ll take the fall, and we can split the assets fifty-fifty,” Arthur’s voice played clearly in her mind as she read the transcript. “Just make sure little Ivy gets nothing.”
"It was Arthur," Ivy whispered, the crushing weight of the betrayal stealing the air from her lungs. "All these years... I blamed the Vanderbilts for everything, but the knife in my back was held by my own family."
Before she could process the shock, the private wall-mounted security monitor beside the desk flickered to life. The screen displayed the subterranean holding cells beneath the Greenwich estate.
Daniel was standing in a concrete interrogation room, his hands cuffed to a metal table, bruised and bleeding from whatever interrogation Jonathan’s private security had subjected him to. Standing across from him was not Jonathan, but a man Ivy hadn't seen in ten years—her uncle Arthur, sporting a smug, unrepentant grin as he held a syringe filled with a clear liquid.
"You should have stayed out of it, Daniel," Arthur’s voice echoed through the hidden audio feed in the suite. "Once the boy is out of the way, Ivy will sign over the remaining shares, and the Sterling empire finally returns to its rightful owner—me."
Ivy’s blood ran cold. She looked toward the door, knowing it was locked, knowing the guards were stationed outside, knowing she had less than two minutes before Arthur administered the lethal dose to the man she loved.
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Without a second thought, Ivy grabbed the heavy crystal decanter of scotch from the sideboard, walked over to the reinforced glass window, and smashed it with all her might.
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