Chapter 6
Outside the iron gates of the Sterling estate, the cool autumn air hit Clara like a refreshing wave. She stood by the curb, watching the sleek black town cars of wedding guests begin to file out down the long driveway. Maya draped her own cashmere coat over Clara’s shoulders, shielding the tattered remains of the wedding dress from the prying eyes of passing chauffeurs.
"Are you going to be okay?" Maya asked gently, rubbing Clara’s arm.
"I will be," Clara replied, her voice steady, though her hands trembled inside the coat pockets. "More than okay. I just need to figure out what my father left behind."
The mention of her late father brought a sudden, sharp clarity to Clara’s mind. For months, Victoria Sterling had subtly undermined Clara’s background, whispering doubts into Julian’s ear about her family’s modest financial standing. But Clara remembered the heavy leather-bound briefcase her father had handed her weeks before he passed away—a briefcase containing records of old business partnerships between her family and the Sterlings. At the time, she had thought it sentimental nonsense. Now, standing on the pavement outside the estate that had just humiliated her, she suspected those papers held the real reason Victoria had gone to such violently desperate lengths to stop the wedding.
Back inside the mansion, Julian stormed down the grand staircase, leaving Victoria and Elena behind in the shattered antechamber. He headed straight for his father’s old ground-floor study, a room kept locked and untouched since his father’s passing three years ago. Julian had the brass key in his desk drawer upstairs, but tonight, his patience for protocol was entirely exhausted. He slammed his shoulder against the heavy mahogany door until the old lock splintered, sending the door swinging wide open into the dusty, leather-scented darkness.
May you like
He flipped the wall switch, illuminating rows of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a massive oak desk covered in old ledgers. Julian walked directly to the safe hidden behind a portrait of his grandfather. He dialed the combination—his father’s birthday—and swung the heavy steel door open. Inside sat stacks of corporate documents, property titles, and personal letters.
He pulled out the topmost folder, labeled Sterling & Vance Holdings, 1998. As he flipped through the onion-skin pages, his breath caught in his throat. The documents detailed a massive financial bailout orchestrated by Clara’s father, a quiet venture capitalist who had saved the Sterling enterprise from total bankruptcy decades ago. According to the contracts, the Sterling estate, the very land they stood on, was legally beholden to a massive debt held by the Vance family—a debt that Victoria had spent the last ten years desperately trying to conceal, erase, and rewrite.
