Chapter 8 - The Price of Treason
Across town, in the gleaming glass tower of Sterling International, Chloe Sterling sat across from her father’s massive mahogany desk.
Her designer bags were packed and sitting near the doorway. The emerald gown had been thrown in the incinerator, but the stain on her reputation was permanent. Social media had erupted over the gala scandal; videos of Julian being arrested while Chloe was exposed as his accomplice had garnered millions of views across every platform.
“You’re cutting me off?” Chloe cried, tears streaming down her carefully contoured cheeks. “Dad, I’m your only daughter! Julian lied to me! He told me he was already separated!”
“Julian lied to you because you wanted to be lied to,” Richard Sterling said coldly, not looking up from his legal documents. “You wanted an easy route into a partnership, and you were willing to destroy a mother and her newborn infant to get it. You disgust me, Chloe.”
“Where am I supposed to go?” she sobbed.
“You’re going to our regional branch in Omaha,” Richard said flatly. “You will start as an entry-level clerk. No trust fund allowance. No company car. No penthouse. You will live on your salary, or you will find your own way in the world. And if I ever hear of you associating with men like Julian Vance again, I will disinherit you from my will entirely.”
Chloe stood there, trembling, stripped of all her high-society vanity, realizing that her ambition had cost her everything.
She turned and dragged her suitcases through the double doors, stepping out into a world where she was no longer a pampered heiress, but a pariah.
Meanwhile, seventy miles away, behind the reinforced concrete walls of the state correctional facility, Julian sat on his narrow bunk.
The cell was six by eight feet. A stainless-steel toilet, a thin wool blanket, and a small slot in the steel door where meals were shoved three times a day.
He picked up a framed photograph he had managed to keep in his personal belongings—the photograph he had mocked with Chloe three weeks after Lily’s birth.
In the picture, I was sitting on our living room couch, completely bare-faced, exhausted, holding Lily against my chest with a faint, tender smile. Julian had called me “deflated.” He had called me “pathetic.”
He remembered the way my eyes had looked in the ballroom—blazing, brilliant, untouchable.
He buried his face in his hands, letting out a dry, racking sob that bounced off the cold cinderblock walls. No one answered. No one cared. The luxury suites, the bespoke suits, the adoring mistress, and the family fortune were gone.
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All that remained was fifteen years of silence.
***
