Chapter 5 - Stripped Bare
Daniel looked as though he had been hit by a freight train. He swayed on his feet, his hands shaking so violently that he couldn't keep his grip on the mahogany chair back.
"That... that's out of context!" Daniel shrieked, looking frantically around the table at the stone-faced board members. "You all know Nora! She’s emotional! She exaggerates! She provoked me! Lorraine, tell them! Tell them she provoked me!"
Lorraine was no longer looking at Daniel. For the first time in her life, the aristocratic mask had shattered completely, revealing the terrified, calculating creature beneath. She was staring at Evelyn, her chest heaving against her silk blouse.
"Evelyn," Lorraine whispered, her voice cracking. "Arthur wouldn't do this to his own flesh and blood. Arthur loved Daniel. This is a vendetta. You manipulated an old, dying man on his deathbed!"
"Arthur did this with a sound mind, four witnesses, and two independent psychiatric evaluations confirming his full testamentary capacity," Evelyn replied coldly. "And speaking of your 'flesh and blood,' Lorraine... perhaps we shouldn't open the secondary audit file regarding the offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands that you’ve been funneling company dividend funds into since 2021."
Lorraine flinched as if she had been struck with a whip.
"You wouldn't dare," she breathed.
"I don't have to," I interjected, standing up slowly from Arthur’s executive chair. The authority in the room shifted instantly. Every eye was on me. "The forensic audit report was delivered to the Securities and Exchange Commission forty-five minutes ago, Lorraine. Along with the unredacted ledgers you thought you deleted from Arthur’s home computer."
Daniel suddenly lunged forward again, knocking over a water tumbler that shattered across the hardwood floor. "You took everything from me! You think you can walk in here and take my company? I will kill you, Nora! I will drag you through every court in this country until you don't have a single penny left to buy food!"
The two security guards moved instantly. One grabbed Daniel by the shoulder, pinning his arm behind his back, while the other stepped between him and the table.
"Mr. Sterling," the head of security said in a low, gravelly voice. "You have been formally terminated from this building. Your executive clearance has been revoked. If you do not exit the premises within two minutes, we will surrender you to the Chicago Police Department officers waiting downstairs."
"Let go of me! Do you know who I am?" Daniel thrashed against the guard's grip, but the guard didn't budge an inch. Daniel’s expensive Tom Ford jacket was twisted awkwardly around his shoulders, his tie askew, his slicked-back hair falling into his wild, sweat-sheathed eyes.
"We know exactly who you are, Daniel," I said, walking around the edge of the conference table until I stood three feet from him. "You’re an unemployed, violent man with twenty-four thousand dollars left in his personal checking account."
Daniel stopped thrashing, his eyes widening in sudden horror. "What did you say?"
"Your black Amex? Canceled," I stated, ticking each point off on my fingers. "The corporate expense account you used to buy Lorraine’s jewels and your sports cars? Frozen by board resolution this morning. The leased Porsche in the basement garage? The keys are already in Evelyn’s possession."
"You can't do that!" Lorraine shrieked, rushing toward me, but Evelyn stepped between us with an icy glare that stopped the older woman dead in her tracks. "That is corporate property! Daniel is the Sterling heir!"
"Daniel is a liability," Marcus Vance, the investor, remarked loudly from near the exit. "And frankly, Mrs. Sterling, you are lucky she isn't having him arrested for assault right this second."
"Oh, the criminal charges are being filed this afternoon, Marcus," Evelyn noted with a predatory grin. "We just wanted Daniel to understand his new financial reality first."
Daniel looked at me, and for the first time since I had met him five years ago, I saw genuine, unadulterated terror in his eyes. The arrogance had evaporated. The cruel, mocking smile he had worn while dragging me across the dining room was gone, replaced by the hollow, sickening realization that the world he ruled was an illusion built entirely on his father's patience—a patience that had finally run out.
"Nora..." Daniel choked out, his voice dropping to a desperate, pathetic whimper. "Nora, please. We’re married. We can talk about this. I was drunk. You know how stressed I've been with the company. I'll go to counseling. I'll apologize to you on my knees in front of everyone—"
"Escort him out," I told the guards, cutting him off without blinking.
"Nora! Nora, listen to me!" Daniel screamed as the guards dragged him backward out of the glass doors. His designer shoes squeaked uselessly against the polished marble floor of the corridor. "You can't do this to me! Mother! Do something! Mother!"
The doors clicked shut, cutting off his pathetic wails.
Lorraine stood alone in the center of the room, clutching her chinchilla coat around herself like a burial shroud. Her face was gray, her lips trembling with silent, impotent rage.
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"You think you've won, don't you, little girl?" Lorraine hissed, her voice trembling with hatred. "You think you can take my son's birthright and just live happily in our home?"
"That brings me to our next agenda item, Lorraine," I said, picking up a second blue folder from the table. "You have exactly two hours to get your things out of my house."
