Chapter 15 - The Viper’s Parting Words
The click of the steel handcuffs around Victor’s wrists sounded like the closing of a tomb.
Richard Sterling offered no resistance; he allowed the officers to pull him from his seat, his head hanging in total defeat, knowing that between his daughter’s trial and his own indictment, the Sterling dynasty had been wiped off the face of the earth in less than a week.
Victor, however, did not go quietly.
As the officers forced him toward the double doors, he dug his heels into the carpet, twisting his neck to glare at Rose with a venom that made the temperature in the room plummet.
"You think you’ve won, little maid?" Victor hissed, a ragged, bloody laugh bubbling up in his chest. "You think you’ve redeemed your father’s name? You have no idea what you’ve walked into!"
Nathaniel took a menacing step forward, but Rose caught his arm, holding him back with a gentle, steady grip. "Let him talk, Nathaniel. A caged dog always barks the loudest."
"Listen to me, Rose Miller!" Victor shouted, straining against the officers’ grip as they dragged him across the threshold. "You think Eleanor Vance is an innocent victim? Ask her about the vault! Ask her why your father’s truck was found with three million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds the night he died!"
Rose froze, her heart skipping a beat.
"Victor, shut your mouth!" Nathaniel warned, his voice rising in anger.
"She doesn't know, does she, Nathaniel?" Victor laughed, a hysterical, mocking screech that echoed down the long marble corridor outside. "She thinks her father was a saint! She thinks he was murdered for being a whistleblower! Ask Eleanor what Thomas Miller was really carrying when the cables snapped! Ask her whose child she was really protecting twenty years ago!"
The officers shoved Victor through the outer security doors, cutting off his laughter as the heavy soundproof glass slammed shut.
The boardroom fell into an eerie, heavy silence. The eleven board members sat motionless, their eyes darting between Nathaniel and Rose, terrified of uttering a single word.
Nathaniel turned immediately to the board. "This session is adjourned. Any director who leaks a single detail of today’s proceedings to the press will find their shares liquidated and their seats vacated by five o’clock. Get out."
Without a word, the directors gathered their files and hurried out the side exits, leaving Nathaniel, Rose, and Leo alone in the vast, silent room eighty stories above the city.
Leo walked over to his sister, his face tight with concern. "Rose... what did he mean? Untraceable bearer bonds? Our father never had three dollars to his name, let alone three million. We lived on food stamps for three years after he died."
Rose didn't answer right away. She looked down at her hands—the faint, pale scars across her palms that Nathaniel had kissed at their wedding altar. The scars had come from saving Eleanor’s life. But Victor’s words were like acid eating into the edges of her memory.
"Nathaniel," Rose said, turning to face her husband. Her voice was steady, but her hazel eyes held a deep, unvoiced pain. "Did your mother tell you everything about the night my father died?"
Nathaniel walked toward her, taking her face tenderly between his hands. "Rose, Victor is a pathological liar facing life in federal prison. He is trying to plant poison between us because it’s the only weapon he has left."
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"Perhaps," Rose whispered. "Or perhaps there are secrets in this family that even you don't know, Nathaniel."
***
