Chapter 6 - The Fall of the House of Cards
The eviction was swift, brutal, and thoroughly covered by local gossip blogs.
By Wednesday morning, two large white moving vans were parked outside the luxury high-rise on 5th Avenue. The doormen, who had once bowed obsequiously to Julian and Chloe as they stepped into their chauffeured vehicles, now stood impassively with clipboards, enforcing the building management’s orders.
Chloe stood on the sidewalk in oversized sunglasses, screaming into her mobile phone while movers carried out designer wardrobe trunks, modern art pieces, and custom furniture. Passersby stopped to take photos. Several of Julian’s former business acquaintances drove past in their town cars, looking straight ahead, pretending not to notice the public execution of his social standing.
Julian sat on the curb nearby, his hands clasped between his knees, staring blankly at the asphalt.
His partners had formally ousted him from the firm at an emergency board meeting on Tuesday afternoon. Without Evelyn Sterling’s corporate guarantee, the firm’s line of credit was canceled. To save their own skins, the partners activated the morality and bad-faith clauses in their partnership agreement, voting unanimously to strip Julian of his equity and hold him personally liable for the outstanding office lease.
His leased Porsche had already been repossessed from the subterranean garage that morning.
“Get up, Julian!” Chloe hissed, storming over to him and kicking his wingtip shoe. “Get off the damn curb! You look pathetic! People are taking pictures!”
Julian looked up at her slowly. His face was gray, hollowed out by days of sleeplessness and terror. “Where are we supposed to go, Chloe? My credit cards are declined. The bank froze my personal accounts. I don’t even have enough cash to pay for a night at a Holiday Inn.”
“We?” Chloe laughed, a shrill, hysterical sound that drew the attention of three pedestrians. “There is no ‘we,’ Julian. Did you honestly think I was going to sleep in a cheap motel with a middle-aged fraud?”
Julian blinked, as if waking from a long, disorienting trance. “What are you talking about? We got married four days ago.”
“We signed a license that hasn’t even been filed with the county clerk yet!” Chloe snarled, pulling a thick envelope from her designer tote bag and throwing it into his lap. “My lawyer drafted the petition for annulment based on material fraud. You lied about your income, your assets, and your ownership of Sterling Holdings. You tricked me into a sham marriage!”
Julian looked down at the legal papers lying on his knees. The glossy white paper felt heavier than lead.
“I lied?” Julian whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of disbelief and awakening rage. “I spent my entire annual salary buying you engagement diamonds! I leased you a Mercedes! I gave your father fifty thousand dollars two months ago to cover his ‘temporary liquidity problem’!”
“Which wasn't even your money!” Chloe shouted back, entirely unbothered by the revelation. “It was your mother’s! You’re nothing, Julian. You’re a forty-three-year-old child living on an allowance. You have no talent, no real business, and without that old woman’s signature, you are absolute garbage.”
She signaled a yellow cab pulling up to the curb. A mover placed her three personal luggage bags into the trunk.
Chloe climbed into the back seat, rolled down the window, and looked down at Julian one last time.
“Have a nice life, Julian. Send my regards to your mother.”
The taxi pulled away, disappearing into the midtown traffic, leaving Julian alone on the sidewalk beside a single duffel bag containing his clothes.
For two hours, Julian sat on that curb. The movers finished packing the trust’s property and drove away. The sidewalk cleared. The autumn wind kicked up fallen leaves and discarded coffee cups, swirling them around his feet.
He pulled his phone from his pocket. The screen was cracked. He scrolled through his contact list.
Over five hundred contacts. Venture capitalists, country club presidents, luxury watch dealers, models, politicians, and socialites.
He dialed his closest friend, Bradley, with whom he had vacationed in St. Barts every winter for five years.
The call went straight to voicemail.
He dialed his fraternity brother, Greg.
“Julian,” Greg answered, his voice hurried and distant. “Look, man, I’m in a client meeting. I saw the news. It’s crazy. Listen, don’t call this number for a while, okay? My partners are getting skittish about any association right now. Best of luck.” The line clicked dead.
Julian tried four more numbers. Two went to voicemail; two were disconnected.
The reality hit him with the force of a physical blow. None of these people were his friends. They had never cared about Julian Sterling. They had flocked to the free champagne, the box seats at Fenway, the private yacht charters, and the bottomless funding of an old family trust they thought would never run dry.
And to keep these parasites smiling, he had looked at the woman who gave him life, the woman who had scrubbed floors and skipped meals forty years ago so he could wear nice clothes to school, and he had let a sociopath smear cake in her face.
Julian buried his face in his hands and wept. Not for his lost fortune. Not for his lost penthouse.
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For the first time in forty-three years, Julian Sterling wept out of pure, unadulterated shame.
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