Chapter 24 - The Face in the Mirror
"Genevieve?" My voice broke on the name.
A bitter, elegant smile touched her lips. "Genevieve was the name written on the baptismal certificate that Arthur Sterling tried to burn forty years ago. For the last twenty years, I have been known as Valerie Moreau."
She took two steps toward me. Up close, the resemblance was undeniable. It was terrifying, wondrous, and heartbreaking all at once.
"Why didn't you come to me sooner?" I asked, tears burning behind my eyes. "Why now? Why wait until Julian destroyed everything?"
"Because until Julian destroyed your marriage, you were untouchable," Valerie replied coldly, though her eyes betrayed a deep, buried ache. "Arthur Sterling had you enclosed in a gilded cage. You were married to a puppet he thought he could control. Julian Vance was chosen for you, Clara. Didn't you ever realize that?"
The ground seemed to tilt beneath my feet. "Chosen? I met Julian at a charity gala in Boston—"
"A gala funded by Sterling Trust," Valerie interrupted, stepping closer. "Julian was drowning in debt from bad investments in London. Arthur approached him, bailed him out, and promised him the Bennett family fortune on one condition: he had to marry you, keep you distracted with domestic life, and slowly siphon off your shares into blind accounts that Arthur managed."
The sheer scope of the conspiracy made my stomach twist violently. "Julian was Arthur's creature from the very beginning."
"Yes," Valerie said. "Until Julian became greedy. Julian brought Sienna into your home because he thought he was invincible. He thought he could have the mistress, the baby, the money, and cast you out without Arthur noticing. But Julian was sloppy. His arrogance exposed the cracks in Arthur’s foundation."
"And you?" I asked, my voice rising with desperate curiosity. "Where have you been? Why did Arthur separate us?"
Valerie reached inside her trench coat and pulled out an antique leather-bound journal. The edges were worn, the leather stamped with the initials *E.B.—Eleanor Bennett*, our mother.
"Our mother didn't die of complications from childbirth," Valerie whispered, her voice cracking for the first time. "She discovered Arthur was embezzling from the Bennett foundation before we were even born. She tried to flee to Switzerland with both of us. But Arthur caught her at the clinic. He took me. He threatened to kill you and our father if she ever spoke a word. She spent her final months locked in a private sanitarium while Arthur took control of our father’s grief."
A loud gunshot cracked through the damp afternoon air.
May you like
The stone monument behind Valerie chipped, raining powder over her shoulder.
"Get down!" Marcus shouted, emerging from the tree line, his service weapon drawn as a black SUV tore onto the pedestrian path, tires shredding the manicured lawn.
