Chapter 32 - The Ghost of Nicholas Sterling
The silence that followed was suffocating. The cold night air felt like glass in my lungs as Nicholas ascended the grand stone steps with slow, deliberate steps. Each thud of his polished leather shoes echoed like a drumbeat of doom.
"Don't take another step," Mia snapped, her voice trembling slightly before hardening into steel. She moved in front of Celeste, her maternal protective instincts kicking in. "You stay right there, Nicholas."
Our father paused on the fourth step. A soft, mocking chuckle rumbled in his chest. "Nicholas? Is that how you greet the man who gave you everything, Mia? I gave you the Sterling name. I gave you the empire Victoria tried so pathetically to steal."
"You abandoned us," I said, stepping up beside Mia. I held my chin high, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing my fear. "You faked your death and left us to be torn apart by Victoria’s venom. You let us destroy each other!"
"Abandoned you?" Nicholas tilted his head, his dark eyes glittering with amused malice. "My dear Lila. Always so quick to judge without seeing the whole board. I didn't abandon you. I pruned the branches."
He reached into his breast pocket. Instantly, the guards around the lawn adjusted their posture, their hands resting near their waistbands. Nicholas pulled out a vintage silver cigarette case, casually flicking it open.
"Victoria Vance was an ambitious fool," Nicholas continued, lighting a thin cigarette. The flame illuminated the predatory lines of his face. "She believed she was outsmarting me. She believed that by driving your mother off the cliff, she had secured the Sterling fortune. I let her play the matriarch. I let her absorb the lawsuits, the public scrutiny, and the tax investigations. While Victoria bled trying to hold together the facade, I rebuilt my shadow empire in Zurich and Singapore."
"And Eleanor?" Celeste whispered, her voice breaking through the tension. "Our mother... the letter said she survived. Where is she?"
Nicholas took a slow drag, exhaling a plume of smoke that drifted into the damp night air. His smile faded into something cruel and predatory.
"Eleanor was weak," he said coldly. "She believed in conscience, in mercy, in dividing what should never be broken. She wanted to take you away from this estate and raise you like commoners in some miserable mountain village. I couldn't allow the Sterling bloodline to be diluted by her sentimentality."
He took another step up the stairs.
"Your mother survived that crash twenty-four years ago because I allowed her to run. I wanted her to live with the agony of being dead to the world. But now... Victoria is finished, the family trust has defaulted to the primary surviving patriarch, and the three of you have miraculously gathered in one place."
"We owe you nothing," Mia hissed, her fists clenched at her sides. "The courts confirmed the Vance-Sterling restructuring yesterday. Lila and I hold the controlling shares."
Nicholas laughed—a sharp, cutting sound that echoed against the stone walls of Elmwood Hill.
"Do you really think a few courtroom signatures can defeat a dead man who has bought every judge from here to the appellate circuit?" Nicholas pulled a thick leather-bound folder from beneath his coat and tossed it onto the veranda floor. It landed with a heavy slap at my feet.
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"Read it, Lila," he commanded. "By dawn, you will sign every deed, every account, and every trust back to me. If you refuse, Elmwood Hill won't be the only thing that burns tonight."
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