Chapter 2 - The Glove Comes Off
The black glove hit the polished dining table, and for one terrible second, nobody in Gabriel Sterling’s penthouse moved.
Sarah Miller’s right hand was swollen across the knuckles. Two fingers were wrapped in gauze beneath the glove, and a dark bruise ran from the base of her thumb toward her wrist.
Gabriel’s face changed.
“Who did this?”
Sarah lowered her eyes. “It was an accident.”
Across the table, Victoria Langley gave a brittle laugh. “That’s what I just told you.”
Gabriel did not look at her.
“I asked Sarah.”
The quiet way he said it made the entire room colder.
Sarah had worked in the Sterling penthouse for eleven months. She knew Gabriel as a man who rarely raised his voice, even when board members tried to corner him or reporters waited outside the building.
But she had never seen him look like this.
He stepped closer.
“Sarah, did the linen closet door do that?”
Her throat tightened.
Three hours earlier, Victoria had pressed that same hand against the brass edge of the service closet and whispered, “You will say the door slipped. You will say it once, and you will never say anything else.”
Sarah had promised herself she could survive one dinner.
Then she saw Gabriel’s eyes.
“No,” she whispered.
Victoria’s chair scraped backward.
Gabriel turned.
“What happened?”
Sarah’s breathing became uneven. “I was looking for the winter table linens. Mrs. Langley came into the hallway.”
“Sarah,” Victoria warned.
Gabriel’s head snapped toward her.
“Do not speak.”
The silence afterward felt heavier than shouting.
Sarah swallowed.
“She asked what I had seen in your study.”
Gabriel’s expression tightened. “My study?”
Victoria stood. “This is absurd.”
Sarah flinched so hard that Gabriel noticed.
That small reaction told him more than any accusation could have.
He moved between them.
“What did you see?”
Sarah glanced toward the hallway.
She could still picture the blue folder on Gabriel’s desk. Sterling Foundation invoices. Vendor names. A handwritten note. And beneath everything, a bank transfer carrying a figure large enough to make her stop breathing.
Two million, four hundred thousand dollars.
“I found papers,” Sarah said.
Victoria’s face lost its color.
Gabriel caught it.
“What papers?”
Sarah shook her head. “I don’t know exactly.”
“You read them,” Victoria snapped.
Sarah recoiled.
Gabriel’s voice dropped.
“Victoria.”
That one word stopped her.
Sarah forced herself to continue.
“There was a company called North Crown Events. I only noticed because I used to work events before I came here.”
Gabriel went still.
North Crown Events handled nearly every Sterling Foundation gala in New York.
Sarah looked at him.
“There was a payment authorization with your signature.”
Gabriel said nothing.
“But the signature looked wrong.”
Victoria reached for her wine.
Her hand trembled.
Sarah noticed.
So did Gabriel.
Then a new voice came from the far end of the dining table.
“Gabriel, maybe everyone is overreacting.”
It belonged to Ethan Cole, Sterling Holdings’ chief financial officer and Gabriel’s oldest friend.
Until that moment, Sarah had almost forgotten he was there.
Gabriel turned toward him.
Ethan offered a reassuring smile.
“Sarah is hurt. She’s frightened. Let’s get her checked by a doctor before this becomes something it isn’t.”
Sarah stared at him.
The sentence sounded reasonable.
Too reasonable.
Then she remembered the study.
The blue folder had not contained only Victoria’s handwriting.
There had been another set of initials beside the transfer approval.
E.C.
Sarah’s stomach dropped.
Gabriel followed her gaze.
“You recognize something?”
Sarah looked from Ethan to Victoria.
And suddenly she understood why Victoria had been so desperate to silence her.
It was not because Sarah had seen one forged signature.
It was because she had seen two people connected to it.
“I think,” Sarah whispered, “Mr. Cole knows exactly what I found.”
May you like
Ethan’s smile disappeared.
And Gabriel slowly turned toward the man he had trusted since college.
