Chapter 5 - Sloane’s Counterstrike
While the Pacific Heights penthouse was settling into a fragile, emotionally fraught truce, a very different kind of storm was making landfall at the St. Francis Yacht Club across town.
Eleanor Sterling sat in a private dining salon, her phone ringing continuously against the linen tablecloth. Every board member, every society editor from the *Chronicle* to *Vogue*, and every major investor was demanding a statement. The wedding of the decade had imploded in under seven minutes, and the market was going to open in thirty-six hours.
"Turn those off," Eleanor snapped at her personal secretary. "And where is Kensington? Why hasn't Charles Kensington returned my calls?"
"Because my father doesn't take calls from liabilities, Eleanor."
The salon doors opened, and Sloane Kensington stepped inside. She had changed out of her wedding dress into an impeccably cut ivory pant suit, her hair pulled back into a severe, elegant ponytail. She was followed by two men carrying heavy leather briefcases.
"Sloane!" Eleanor gasped, rising quickly, reaching for the girl’s hands with desperate familiarity. "Thank God you're here. We can salvage this. We will release a joint statement. We’ll say the stress of the preparations caused a temporary postponement. We will discredit that woman—my private investigators are already digging into her past in Portland. We can claim the children were a surrogate arrangement or an extortion ring—"
"Stop talking, Eleanor," Sloane said, sitting down at the head of the table. "You are embarrassing what little dignity your family has left."
Eleanor froze, her eyes narrowing into cold slits. "Excuse me? You are speaking to the head of the Sterling family."
"No," Sloane said calmly, sliding a thick manila folder across the table. "I’m speaking to a woman who committed grand larceny, wire fraud, and medical malpractice conspiracy. And as of twenty minutes ago, Harrison signed over his full voting proxy to an independent executive committee."
Eleanor’s breath hitched. "He... he did what?"
"Harrison called an emergency executive board session from his penthouse," Sloane explained, her voice carrying the chilling authority of someone who had spent her entire life mastering the boardrooms Eleanor only manipulated from the shadows. "He used his fifty-one percent controlling stake in Sterling Enterprises to strip you of your chairmanship. You are out, Eleanor. You have no office, no voting rights, and no access to the operational accounts."
"He can't do that!" Eleanor screeched, slamming her palms on the table. "I built this empire! I protected him! Everything I did was to keep the Sterling name pure!"
"And in doing so, you handed me the easiest corporate takeover of my career," Sloane smiled—a razor-sharp, brilliant flash of white teeth. "Did you really think I wanted to marry Harrison because I was head over heels in love with his brooding, melancholic personality? Harrison is a decent man, but he was an empty shell. I agreed to the merger because Kensington Global needed your logistics network in Asia."
Sloane leaned forward, her voice dropping into a lethal purr.
"Now, Kensington Global doesn't need to merge through marriage. We are buying your distressed shares at a forty percent discount because your reputation is currently burning on every social media feed in the country. And Harrison? Harrison agreed to the sale, on one condition."
Eleanor slumped back into her chair, her face completely drained of color. "What condition?"
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"That fifty percent of the proceeds from the sale be transferred directly and irrevocably into an independent trust fund," Sloane said, watching the older woman wither with immense satisfaction. "In the names of Noah, Leo, and Chloe Sterling. Managed exclusively by their mother, Maya Linwood."
***
