Chapter 3 - THE CHILDREN WERE PART OF THE PLAN
I didn't sleep that night.
Not because I missed Julian.
Because I couldn't stop thinking about my father.
He had always warned me about the Sterling family.
“Money doesn't make people dangerous,” he once told me.
“Fear does.”
At 7:00 a.m., my attorney arrived.
He brought a second envelope.
“Your father left this with our firm.”
I stared at it.
“Why am I seeing it now?”
“He instructed us to release it only if Julian attempted to remove you from Sterling Meridian.”
My hands shook.
Inside was a letter.
Elena,
If you're reading this, the Sterling family has finally shown you who they are.
Don't fight them emotionally.
Follow the money.
Everything they fear is hidden in Account 47.
I looked at my attorney.
“What is Account 47?”
He shook his head.
“I don't know.”
The next document contained a bank reference.
Account 47 belonged to a dormant subsidiary called Sterling Family Holdings.
I had never heard of it.
We investigated.
The company had existed for seventeen years.
Its listed director was Margaret.
Its financial records were almost completely sealed.
Then we found the payments.
Medical clinics.
Private investigators.
Offshore trusts.
Political consultants.
And one recurring payment.
Every month.
For fourteen years.
To a man named Daniel Cross.
My father had written his name in the margin.
TRUST HIM.
I called the number attached to the file.
An older man answered.
“Who is this?”
“Elena Ward.”
Silence.
Then:
“Thomas's daughter?”
“Yes.”
“I wondered when you'd call.”
We met that evening at a quiet restaurant outside Austin.
Daniel Cross was seventy-two.
Former federal accountant.
My father had worked with him decades earlier.
He placed a thick envelope on the table.
“Your father discovered something.”
“What?”
“Sterling Meridian wasn't simply an investment company.”
My stomach tightened.
“What was it?”
“A laundering operation.”
I stared at him.
“For what?”
“Political bribes. Fraudulent real-estate acquisitions. And something much worse.”
He pushed a photograph toward me.
It showed Margaret.
Younger.
Standing beside my father.
I recognized the building behind them.
Sterling Meridian's original headquarters.
Daniel continued.
“Your father tried to expose them.”
“Why didn't he?”
“He was killed before he could.”
The words struck me like a physical blow.
I stared at him.
“My father died of a heart attack.”
Daniel looked at me.
“That was the official story.”
I couldn't breathe.
“What are you saying?”
He leaned closer.
“Your father didn't die naturally.”
Then he placed another photograph on the table.
It showed Margaret leaving a private clinic fourteen years earlier.
The same year Julian and I got married.
And beside her stood a doctor.
The doctor who had performed Victoria's fertility procedure.
I stared at the photograph.
Daniel whispered:
“Those twins weren't created to give Julian heirs.”
“Then why?”
May you like
He looked directly at me.
“To give Margaret control of your father's trust.”
