Chapter 5 - The Fortress at Maple Bluff
The Sterling estate at Maple Bluff looked less like a private residence and more like a modern fortress disguised as an architectural masterpiece.
Perched on a rocky promontory overlooking Lake Mendota, the house was constructed of rough-hewn Wisconsin limestone, blackened steel, and massive walls of triple-paned glass. Two private security guards in subdued tactical uniforms opened the wrought-iron gates after scanning Reid’s vehicle, their radios crackling with status updates.
“Mr. Reid,” the older guard said as we pulled through. “Mr. Arthur called ahead. The media vans are already gathering at the venue in Middleton. We’ve rerouted all incoming press inquiries to corporate headquarters in Chicago.”
“Thank you, Donald,” Reid said through the lowered window. “No one enters without my personal verbal authorization. That includes anyone with the last name Vance.”
“Understood, sir.”
The car swept up the winding, heated driveway and came to a stop beneath a cantilevered portico.
Inside, the house was silent, smelling of cedarwood, polished stone, and expensive coffee. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the gray expanse of the lake, where whitecaps were beginning to form under an overcast afternoon sky.
Arthur Sterling was already sitting in the library, his reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, surrounded by stacks of manila folders and two glowing laptop screens.
When we walked in, he looked up and closed the folder in front of him.
“Willa,” he said, abandoning the formal title. “Come in. Sit down. Reid, pour Dr. Vance some tea or something stronger. She’s had a hell of an afternoon.”
I sat in a deep leather armchair across from the older man. For the first time all day, I let out a breath that felt complete. My feet throbbed from the low heels I was wearing, and the emotional adrenaline of the confrontation was beginning to curdle into a deep, bone-weary exhaustion.
Reid returned a moment later, setting a porcelain cup of hot Earl Grey on the small slate table beside me, followed by a tumbler of scotch for himself. He took a seat on the leather sofa opposite us, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
“Here is where we stand,” Arthur said, sliding a thick document across the mahogany table toward me. “Blythe Vance approached our venture fund fourteen months ago through a mutual acquaintance at the Madison Country Club. She possessed what appeared to be genuine, authenticated lab journals from the Saint Jude’s Immunology Pavilion.”
“How did she get them?” I asked, my brow furrowing. “My lab has biometric access protocols. Even my research assistants can’t export unencrypted data without dual-factor authorization.”
Arthur exchanged a dark look with Reid.
“She didn't hack your servers, Willa,” Reid said quietly. “She didn't need to. Think back to last Thanksgiving. Did you go anywhere near your parents' house?”
“No,” I said flatly. “I haven't set foot in Wisconsin since the day I left for my fellowship.”
“Did you leave anything behind?” Arthur asked. “In your childhood bedroom? In the attic?”
The memory hit me like a physical blow.
My third-year undergraduate notebooks. The physical, handwritten laboratory ledgers where I had spent hundreds of hours documenting my early hypotheses on synthetic platelet stabilization. Before the digital era, before Saint Jude’s had funded my post-doctoral lab, I had kept everything in three bound, black-and-red composition notebooks.
When I left my parents' house thirteen years ago after that graduation party, I had packed two suitcases of clothes, my diploma, and my laptop. My mother had locked my bedroom door, claiming everything left inside belonged to the household.
“The early ledgers,” I whispered, cold horror prickling at the back of my neck. “The baseline formulas.”
“Exactly,” Arthur said. “Blythe didn't just find them. She took them to a corrupt biochemist named Dr. Gregory Vane—a man who was stripped of his medical license in Illinois five years ago for falsifying clinical trials. Blythe paid him fifty thousand dollars to transcribe your handwritten notes into modern regulatory formats, updating the chemical nomenclature to make it look like a current, groundbreaking discovery.”
“And she used her own name,” I said, the disgust rising thick in my throat.
“She didn't just use her name,” Reid said, his voice dropping into that dark, dangerous register. “She told our board that she had spent seven years working under a pseudonym because she was afraid her 'mentally unstable, estranged sister' would try to claim credit for her work.”
I stared at Reid, the audacity of the lie leaving me completely speechless.
“She painted you as a psychotic stalker, Willa,” Reid continued, his gray eyes burning with cold fury. “She told me that you were so consumed by jealousy over her life that you had spent a decade threatening her, trying to sabotage her career, and that you had eventually descended into severe addiction. She said she was selling the patent to Sterling Bio to establish a permanent trust fund to pay for your long-term institutional care.”
I let out a sound that was half-gasp, half-sob.
To the world, to Reid, to the Sterling family, Blythe hadn't just pretended to be the brilliant scientist. She had pretended to be the saintly, suffering younger sister who was sacrificing her own scientific legacy to take care of the 'ugly, broken' sister who had supposedly ruined herself.
It was diabolical. It was brilliant. And it was completely, undeniably Eleanor and Blythe Vance.
“She played me,” Reid said, his voice flat. “She played my entire investment committee. My mother died of leukemia eight years ago, Willa. Blythe knew that. She knew that our family foundation prioritizes hematology research above all else. She targeted me at that country club with surgical precision.”
He set his glass down on the table with a sharp *clink*.
“She didn't want a husband,” Reid said. “She wanted a billionaire’s name to shield her from the fact that her father’s firm was twenty-four hours away from bankruptcy.”
Before I could respond, the red light on Arthur’s desk phone began to flash.
Arthur pressed the speaker button. “Yes?”
Donald’s voice came through the speaker, tight and urgent.
May you like
“Mr. Arthur, we have a situation at the main gate. It’s Eleanor Vance. She’s rammed her Mercedes into the security barrier, and she’s refusing to leave until she speaks with Dr. Vance.”
***