Chapter 5
Evelyn left Chloe in the care of a female social worker who provided fresh formula, diapers, and a warm blanket for the baby. She walked down the linoleum-tiled corridor to Interrogation Room B, where Elena Sterling sat alone. The emerald green evening gown looked entirely out of place under the harsh white lights, its sequins catching the glare and casting fractured light against the gray cinderblock walls.
Elena looked up as Evelyn entered, her posture rigid, her hands folded tightly in her lap. The veneer of shock had worn off, replaced by a cold, calculating anger that matched her husband’s, though directed entirely at him.
“You didn’t arrest him just for the roadside stunt, did you, Officer Vance?” Elena asked without preamble. Her voice was steady, lacking the tremor from the highway.
“Mr. Sterling was arrested for reckless endangerment and abandonment,” Evelyn said, taking a seat across the table. “However, based on what Ms. Chloe just told us, and whatever you’re about to tell me, that list of charges is likely to grow significantly.”
Elena let out a short, bitter laugh. “Richard thinks he’s the smartest man in any room he walks into. He built a real estate investment firm that manages millions for high-net-worth clients. But for the past two years, the books haven’t balanced. He’s been using corporate accounts as his personal piggy bank to fund his lifestyle—and apparently, to pay for apartments and hush money for young women.”
“Including Chloe,” Evelyn noted.
“Including Chloe, yes,” Elena said, her eyes narrowing. “When I tracked his car today using the family locator app, I wasn’t just trying to catch him cheating. I had just received an anonymous compliance audit on my phone—an audit sent directly to my personal email from someone inside his firm. It showed multi-million-dollar discrepancies tied directly to dummy accounts bearing initials that matched his mistress.”
Evelyn leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. “So when you intercepted him on the road today, it wasn’t just a marital confrontation.”
“No,” Elena admitted coldly. “It was a financial intervention. He was trying to bundle Chloe and the baby across state lines because he knew the federal investigators were closing in on the embezzlement. He wanted to use them as leverage, or worse, make them disappear so the paper trail leading to those dummy accounts would vanish with them.”
The pieces clicked together in Evelyn’s mind with chilling clarity. The roadside abandonment wasn’t a sudden loss of temper; it was a desperate, panicked evacuation of a criminal liability. Richard Sterling hadn’t just thrown his mistress and child out on the highway because he was stressed about a family argument; he had cut loose dead weight to save his own skin from a white-collar prison sentence.
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“Mrs. Sterling,” Evelyn said, her voice dropping an octave. “Are you willing to sign a formal statement detailing these financial discrepancies and hand over the digital files you received?”
Elena looked down at her emerald green dress, then up at the badge on Evelyn’s chest. A slow, grim smile touched the corners of her mouth. “Officer Vance, I’ve spent ten years helping that man build an empire. If he thinks he can throw me under the bus for a twenty-four-year-old receptionist and a mountain of debt, he’s gravely mistaken. Where do I sign?”
