Chapter 3 - MY HUSBAND HAD CHOSEN ME BEFORE I EVER MET HIMThe first time Richard Sterling spoke to me, I was twenty.
I remembered every detail because for years I had treated it like the beginning of a love story.
A university fundraising reception.
Champagne I was too young to appreciate.
A borrowed dress from my roommate.
Richard accidentally knocking a glass of sparkling water from my hand.
His ridiculous apology.
Dinner two nights later.
Flowers the following week.
A proposal eleven months after that.
I had spent years believing chance brought us together.
Now I sat in Alexander Vance’s guest suite while Gabriel spread financial records across a coffee table and quietly dismantled the romance sentence by sentence.
“Sterling Strategic Services paid a man named Harold Pierce twenty thousand dollars four months before Richard met you.”
“Who is Pierce?”
“Former records supervisor for Mecklenburg County child services.”
My stomach turned.
“What did he access?”
Gabriel slid over an audit log.
“My file.”
“Yes.”
I stared at the page.
My mother’s death certificate.
School records.
Foster placements.
Birth information.
Everything I had spent years trying to forget.
“Why?”
“We’re working on that.”
Alexander stood near the fireplace.
He had given me an entire bedroom wing.
I had refused the bedroom wing and chosen the smallest guest room.
He did not argue.
That mattered too.
“What did Richard know about Catherine?” I asked.
Gabriel answered.
“Possibly more than we do.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Fantastic.”
My new life appeared to consist entirely of powerful men knowing things about my own history before I did.
My phone buzzed.
A number I didn’t recognize.
It’s Vanessa. Please don’t delete this. Richard lied to me too.
I stared.
Another message arrived.
I know why he made me wear the emerald today.
My pulse accelerated.
Alexander saw my expression.
“Who?”
“Vanessa.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“That sounded awfully familiar.”
“You’re not meeting her.”
“And somehow it sounded worse the second time.”
Gabriel covered what might have been a smile.
Alexander frowned at him.
Gabriel became professional again.
I typed:
Tell me here.
Vanessa answered:
Not safe. He checks my phone.
Then:
He wanted Vance to see the necklace.
I looked at Alexander.
“Richard used the emerald to draw you out.”
Alexander became still.
“Why?”
I sent another message.
Why would Richard want Alexander to see you wearing it?
Vanessa replied:
Because he said if Vance still cared about Catherine, he’d come personally.
Silence filled the room.
Alexander sat.
Gabriel swore quietly.
I stared at the phone.
My ex-husband had put my mother’s necklace around another woman’s neck not merely to humiliate me.
He had used my grief as bait.
That somehow felt worse.
Vanessa sent an address.
A twenty-four-hour diner near Charlotte Douglas Airport.
30 minutes. After that I’m leaving.
Alexander said, “Absolutely not.”
“I’m going.”
“No.”
I stood.
“You found me today. You do not get grandfather authority retroactively.”
His mouth opened.
Closed.
Gabriel looked away.
I continued.
“I spent three years having a husband make every decision because he had more money than I did. I am not replacing him with another wealthy man who thinks ‘no’ is a complete conversation.”
Alexander’s expression softened.
“You’re right.”
That stopped me.
Richard had almost never said those words.
Alexander continued.
“But going alone would be reckless.”
“I didn’t say alone.”
We all looked at Gabriel.
He sighed.
“Of course.”
Twenty-five minutes later, I rode in an armored SUV toward a diner while Gabriel reviewed rules.
“Stay inside.”
“Yes.”
“Do not leave through the rear entrance.”
“Yes.”
“If Vanessa asks you to move locations—”
“I say no.”
“If anything feels wrong—”
“I scream?”
“You get behind me.”
“I’m eight months pregnant.”
“That does not prevent bullets.”
“Comforting.”
His mouth twitched.
At the diner, Vanessa sat in a rear booth wearing a gray sweater and no emerald.
She looked younger without the white coat and cruel smile.
More frightened too.
When she saw me, she stood.
“I’m sorry.”
I stared.
“For sleeping with my husband or wearing my dead mother’s necklace?”
Her face flushed.
“Both.”
“That covers a lot.”
Gabriel took the booth behind us.
Vanessa sat.
“I didn’t know the necklace was yours until yesterday.”
“You heard me say it outside the courtroom.”
“Yes.”
“You kept wearing it.”
Her eyes dropped.
“Yes.”
At least she didn’t lie.
“Why?”
“Because Richard told me you were trying to manipulate him.”
I laughed.
“With what resources? My hundred-dollar empire?”
Vanessa winced.
“He said you were pretending to be helpless so you could force him into a settlement.”
“He froze the accounts.”
“I know that now.”
I leaned back carefully.
“What does Richard want from Alexander?”
Vanessa’s hands shook.
“Access.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“That’s not enough.”
She swallowed.
“Richard has a room in his office he never let me enter.”
Of course he did.
“Three weeks ago, I found the key.”
I stared.
“Inside were files on you.”
My chest tightened.
“Photographs?”
“Everything.”
“Since when?”
“Before you met.”
Even knowing it, hearing Vanessa say it made me sick.
“There were pictures from college. Your first apartment. Your foster family.”
My baby moved.
I pressed a hand against my stomach.
Vanessa continued.
“And there was a photograph of Alexander.”
I looked toward Gabriel.
He was listening.
“What else?”
“A DNA report.”
The diner seemed to become very quiet.
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
My voice disappeared.
Vanessa whispered, “Richard already knew Alexander Vance was your grandfather.”
“When?”
“The report was dated fourteen months before your wedding.”
The air left my lungs.
Richard had known.
He had stood beside me at our wedding knowing more about my family than I did.
“Why marry me?”
Vanessa’s eyes filled.
“I asked him.”
“You confronted him?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That you were an opportunity.”
I looked away.
I did not cry.
Not yet.
Vanessa reached across the table.
I pulled my hand back.
She stopped.
“He said his father had been looking for Catherine Vance’s child for years.”
Gabriel leaned forward.
“Thomas Sterling?”
Vanessa nodded.
“He had files. Richard inherited them after Thomas died.”
Alexander had mentioned Richard’s father in the anonymous note.
“What did Thomas want with me?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you know something else.”
Vanessa’s silence told me.
“What?”
“Richard meets a man once a month.”
“Who?”
“I never knew his real name.”
“Describe him.”
“Late sixties. Silver hair. Walks with a cane.”
Gabriel’s face changed.
“What?”
I turned.
He was staring at Vanessa.
“What?”
He asked her, “Scar over the right temple?”
“Yes.”
Gabriel stood.
“We’re leaving.”
“Who is he?”
Gabriel looked at me.
“Julian Vance.”
I frowned.
Alexander had never mentioned him.
“Who?”
“Alexander’s younger brother.”
Cold moved through me.
“Richard has been meeting my grandfather’s brother?”
“Yes.”
Vanessa grabbed my wrist.
“Wait.”
Gabriel looked at her hand until she released me.
Vanessa whispered, “Richard calls him Uncle Julian.”
Before I could respond, headlights flashed through the diner windows.
Gabriel’s expression changed.
“Down.”
The sound came a second later.
Glass exploded.
People screamed.
Gabriel threw himself across the booth as a bullet tore through the window where Vanessa’s head had been.
We hit the floor.
Vanessa screamed.
I covered my stomach.
Another shot cracked into the wall.
Gabriel drew his weapon but did not fire blindly.
“Kitchen!”
We crawled.
A waitress dragged open a swinging door.
Gabriel moved us behind a steel refrigerator while restaurant staff called 911.
Then the shooting stopped.
Three minutes later, police found an abandoned rifle across the road.
No shooter.
Outside, Vanessa shook so badly she could barely stand.
She looked at me.
“I was supposed to be useful to him.”
“Richard?”
She shook her head.
“Julian.”
My blood went cold.
“What do you mean?”
“Richard introduced me to him.”
“When?”
“Eight months ago.”
May you like
Then Vanessa said the sentence that changed the betrayal again.
“Julian told Richard I was supposed to replace you after the baby was born.”
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