Chapter 9 - The Confrontation at the Sterling Manor
We didn't take Jared’s sports car or my sedan; we took a nondescript rental car that Jared’s head of security arranged within twenty minutes. If Julian Sterling had our vehicles flagged, he wouldn't follow this one.
Diane’s favorite place in Chicago hadn't been a restaurant or a park. It was the Newberry Library on North Clark Street, where she had volunteered for fifteen years restoring rare historical manuscripts and private collections.
An hour later, the head librarian, Mrs. Eleanor Vance—no relation to the criminal Marcus Vance, but a dear friend of Diane’s for thirty years—led us down into the climate-controlled preservation room beneath the main reading halls.
“Arthur,” Eleanor said softly, adjusting her reading spectacles. “When Diane deposited her private collection box here before she went into the hospital, she gave me very strict instructions. She said: ‘If Arthur comes with Jared, and Arthur asks for the ledger that doesn't balance, unlock box 77.’”
Eleanor placed a heavy brass key on the table and pointed to a steel safety box embedded in the stone wall.
My hands trembled as I turned the key. The tumblers clicked, and the heavy metal door swung open.
Inside was a single blue-cloth binder, worn at the corners, titled: *Bio-Safety Review Log: Bay 4 — Northwestern University, 2012*.
Jared and I sat together at the long oak examination table under the green-shaded reading lamps. I opened the binder.
On the very first page was a handwritten letter from Diane, dated two weeks before she passed away.
*“My dearest Arthur, my beloved Jared,”* the letter read.
*“If you are reading this, it means the storm Harrison Sterling created has finally reached our door. Jared, my sweet boy, you never caused that pressure surge in Bay 4. Harrison Sterling’s engineers deliberately introduced an unstable recombinant agent into your bioreactor to ruin your independent project and force you into their corporate laboratory.*
*I caught them falsifying the safety logs. When Harrison realized I had the raw data, he came to our home. He told me that if I went to the police, his legal team would tie Jared up in criminal indictments until his youth and his brilliant mind were crushed by legal debt.*
*I took his forty-thousand-dollar settlement check to make him believe I had backed down, but I never cashed it. The contract is void.*
*The true patent for the diagnostic engine belongs exclusively to Jared. But more importantly: Harrison Sterling did not act alone. His primary funding came from a shadow consortium in Switzerland that operates under the name ‘Helios Alpha.’*
*And Arthur, my brilliant auditor... look at the serial number of the Swiss transfer on page 42. It matches the trust account your own father left you forty years ago.”*
I gasped, my vision blurring.
My father’s trust account?
My father had been a humble railway clerk. He had died leaving behind a modest savings account of five thousand dollars. What did my father have to do with an offshore Swiss syndicate?
Jared flipped frantically to page 42. There, stamped in purple ink, was an official wire confirmation from Banque Cantonale de Genève:
`REMITTER: HELIOS ALPHA FOUNDATION.`
`BENEFICIARY: STERLING BIO-PHARMACEUTICALS.`
`ORIGINATING ESCROW: BLAKE ESTATE ARCHIVE 1974.`
“Dad...” Jared whispered, his voice breathless with awe and terror. “This wasn't just about my company. This wasn't even just about Mom.”
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“It’s about who we are,” I whispered.
***