Chapter 2 - The Sins of the Golden Child
If a grenade had detonated in the center of the rotunda, the shockwave could not have been more violent.
“Reid! No! You can’t do this!” Blythe came flying down the remaining stairs, the heavy train of her designer gown snagging briefly on the brass stair-rod before ripping with a sickening sound of tearing lace. She didn't care. She lunged forward, grabbing Reid by both lapels of his tuxedo. “Look at me! Look at me, Reid! I love you! We have four hundred people out there! The governor is in the fourth row! My father’s partners are here!”
Reid didn't push her away, but he didn't touch her either. He stood rigid, looking down at her frantic, tear-streaked face with the detached clinical curiosity of a coroner examining an interesting specimen.
“You committed federal wire fraud, Blythe,” Reid said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “You forged signatures on commercial patents submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission. You didn’t just lie to me about your sister. You used my investment fund to launder intellectual property stolen from an active state university research director.”
He reached up, took her wrists, and peeled her hands off his suit with deliberate, unhurried strength.
“Get your hands off me.”
Eleanor swept in like a hurricane of synthetic fabric and screaming entitlement. “Reid Sterling, you listen to me right now! You cannot embarrass this family! Do you have any idea how much money we spent on this venue? Do you know who my husband is? You cannot humiliate Blythe because of some ridiculous misunderstanding over paperwork!”
Mom turned on me, her eyes bloodshot, her face contorted into an ugly, snarling mask that stripped away forty years of polished country-club pretensions.
“You!” she shrieked, stabbing a manicured fingernail within an inch of my face. “You miserable, jealous little parasite! You couldn't stand it, could you? You couldn't bear to see your sister happy! You were born sour, you grew up plain, and now you crawl out of the gutter after thirteen years just to ruin the best thing that ever happened to this family!”
I didn't flinch. Thirteen years ago, that voice would have reduced me to a weeping wreck, searching my reflection in the mirror for whatever physical defect made my mother despise me so deeply.
Now, standing at thirty-five years old, having held the hands of dying children in intensive care and stared down multimillion-dollar venture capitalists in boardrooms, Eleanor Vance looked remarkably small to me. She was just an aging, desperate bully whose only currency had always been superficial validation.
“Lower your finger, Eleanor,” Aunt Celia warned, her voice trembling with an anger I had never heard from my usually mild-mannered aunt. “Lower it before I break it off.”
“Shut up, Celia!” Eleanor screamed. “You brought this viper into my daughter’s wedding!”
“Actually,” a new voice boomed across the foyer, “she didn’t need an invitation to be here. Because she’s the primary stockholder in the venture that funded this entire circus.”
We all turned.
Standing by the heavy mahogany entrance doors was a silver-haired man in a bespoke navy three-piece suit. He carried an umbrella despite the sunshine outside, leaning lightly on it with an air of absolute, uncontested power. Behind him stood two men in identical dark business suits carrying thick leather executive briefcases.
Reid straightened. “Uncle Arthur.”
Arthur Sterling. The patriarch of the Sterling Family Trust. The man whose name was etched into medical wings, law libraries, and museum rotundas across three states.
Arthur walked forward, the tap of his umbrella ferrule against the marble sounding like the ticking of an executioner’s clock. He didn't look at Blythe, nor did he look at Eleanor, who was suddenly looking very uncertain of herself.
Arthur stopped directly in front of me. To the utter shock of everyone in the foyer, the legendary corporate raider inclined his head in a deep, respectful bow.
“Dr. Vance,” Arthur said warmly. “I apologize for the theatrics. Reid called my car the moment he saw your name on the guest ledger twenty minutes ago. I had my team expedite the verification of the Minneapolis patent filings while we were driving over from the airstrip.”
He turned slightly toward his nephew. “It’s confirmed, Reid. The laboratory registries Blythe submitted three months ago were pulled directly from the University of Minnesota’s proprietary server. Downloaded using an alumni login belonging to a former lab assistant whom Blythe paid twenty thousand dollars last November.”
Blythe let out a strangled wail and sank onto the lowest step of the staircase, her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking violently.
Eleanor looked back and forth between the elder Sterling and her weeping daughter, her lips moving without sound like a fish gasping on dry land.
“What... what does that mean?” Eleanor managed to choke out.
Arthur Sterling turned his cold, patrician gaze upon her.
“It means, Mrs. Vance, that your daughter didn’t just lose a fiancé today,” Arthur said softly. “It means that within the hour, the federal marshals will be serving a freeze order on every account associated with your husband’s brokerage firm, which acted as the escrow agent for the fraudulent patent transfer. And as for this wedding...”
Arthur glanced around at the vaulted ceilings, the imported floral arrangements, and the crystal chandeliers.
May you like
“...the Sterling Trust paid the two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar deposit on this estate. I have already instructed management to lock the dining pavilions and dismiss the catering staff. If you and your guests are not off these premises in thirty minutes, you will be escorted out by the county sheriff for criminal trespass.”
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