Chapter 4 - The Aunt in the Attic
The address on Catherine Sterling’s estate was an isolated, sprawling stone manor nestled on the jagged coastline of Evanston, far enough from the city center to feel like a different century. The wind whipped white-capped waves against the rocks below the cliffside gardens as Maya parked the car in the circular gravel drive.
The heavy oak front door was opened not by a butler, but by a woman in her late fifties wearing a thick wool cardigan, her silver hair cut short in a sharp bob. She had my father’s jawline and the same piercing, assessing eyes that used to make executive boards squirm.
"You took your time getting here, Eleanor," Catherine said, stepping back from the threshold. Her voice had the dry, gravelly texture of someone who hadn't spoken to an outsider in days. "Your father was always stubborn, but dying before he could introduce us was a particularly dramatic flourish, even for him."
I stepped into the foyer, letting Maya carry the heavy briefcase containing the Zurich documents. The interior smelled of burning peat, old books, and damp wool.
"You knew about Caleb," I said, walking past her into a dimly lit study lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
"Of course I knew," Catherine replied, closing the heavy door behind us. She walked over to a silver tea service on a mahogany sideboard and poured two cups of dark, steaming tea without asking. "Caleb has been whining about his birthright since he was old enough to hold a fountain pen. He thought that if he married the boss's daughter and bled the accounts dry, he could force the board to hand the conglomerate back to the Sterling line through a leveraged buyout."
She handed me a porcelain cup. Her hands were steady, her fingers adorned with heavy, old-fashioned silver rings.
"He didn't realize," Catherine continued, turning to face me, "that Arthur didn't ruin our family out of malice. My father—Julian—was a thief who tried to sink the entire conglomerate to pay off his gambling debts in Monte Carlo. Arthur saved the company, saved our family name from federal prison, and took the blame so the rest of us could eat."
I took a slow sip of the tea. It was bitter, dark, and warm. "And yet you held the secondary mortgage on the Nantucket property."
Catherine let out a dry, humorless chuckle. "I held it because Caleb came to me six months ago begging for backing to complete his takeover. He promised that once he divorced you and took control of the board, he would restore the Sterling name to the corporate masthead."
She walked over to her desk, picked up a folded legal document with a red notary ribbon, and laid it on the blotter between us.
"He signed over his future inheritance rights to me in exchange for three million dollars in bridge financing," Catherine said quietly. "Which means, legally speaking, Caleb doesn't just owe Vance Enterprises millions in embezzled funds. He owes me. And the collateral he put up for my loan wasn't his to give—it was yours."
I looked down at the document. Caleb’s signature was scrawled at the bottom in bold, arrogant strokes—the signature of a man who thought he had outsmarted everyone in the room.
"If I validate this debt," I said, looking up at my aunt, "Caleb isn't just going away for wire fraud. He's going to lose every penny of his personal holdings, his trust allocations, and his social standing permanently."
"He already lost them the moment he walked into that cathedral with his mistress," Catherine said sharply. "The question isn't what happens to Caleb, Eleanor. The question is what you're going to do when you find out who funded his bridge loan through my accounts in the first place."
My hand froze halfway to my cup. "What do you mean?"
"Catherine didn't finance him alone, Ellie," a voice spoke from the shadows near the library doors.
I whipped around.
May you like
Standing in the archway, holding a leather folder identical to the ones in my father’s vault, was Sarah Lin—the CFO who had promised to help me clean house just three hours ago.
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