Chapter 3 - The Lioness Prepares
At 7:00 AM the following morning, a sleek black Maybach pulled up to the curb outside my apartment, its tinted windows reflecting the grey Chicago drizzle.
Victoria Sterling stepped out, carrying an ostrich-skin briefcase. She was fifty-five, sharp-featured, with iron-grey hair cut into an immaculate bob and eyes that missed nothing. Walking beside her was Marcus Chen, six-foot-two of quiet, lethal discipline, his dark suit tailored to conceal the sidearm beneath his armpit.
I opened the front door before they reached the top step.
“You look remarkably well for a woman who took a side of russet potatoes to the jaw on Saturday,” Victoria said, walking past me and setting her briefcase on the dining table without waiting for an invitation.
“The starch was good for my skin,” I replied dryly, closing the door behind Marcus. “Do you have the filings?”
Victoria clicked open her briefcase and produced three distinct sets of documents bound in navy blue leather.
“Croft is amateur hour compared to the sharks we deal with in Hong Kong and Zurich, Dela, but he’s desperate,” Victoria said, laying the papers flat. “Desperate men make sloppy moves, but sloppy moves can still cause catastrophic damage. They filed an ex parte petition this morning in Cook County Probate Court requesting a preliminary hearing on your testamentary capacity.”
“On what grounds?”
“They’re using Felix’s signature,” Victoria said, her eyes softening with rare sympathy. “He signed an affidavit stating that you have demonstrated severe hoarding behavior, extreme social isolation, and an irrational refusal to acknowledge your net worth, creating an environment of emotional and financial neglect.”
I felt the blow in the pit of my stomach, heavy and dull. Felix had signed it. He had actually put his name on a document declaring his own mother unfit.
“He didn't read it,” I said quietly. It wasn't an excuse; it was an assessment. “Rya put a stack of paperwork in front of him and told him it was for their joint insurance or their new apartment lease, and he signed it because he trusts her.”
“It doesn't matter whether he read it,” Marcus chimed in, leaning against the doorframe. “His signature is notarized. Judge Miller is presiding. Miller is old school, but he’s notoriously protective of heirs who appear to be disenfranchised by eccentric billionaires. Croft picked him intentionally.”
“Then we don't let it reach Miller’s courtroom,” I said.
I pulled two chairs out from the table and sat down. “Victoria, what is the status of the Morrison-Weinstein Family Trust?”
“Completely intact,” Victoria answered immediately. “Harold set it up like a fortress. You control 100% of the voting shares until your death or until you voluntarily step down as Managing Director. But here’s the vulnerability: Section 14B states that if the Managing Director is declared medically incapacitated by two independent court-appointed psychiatrists, the voting proxy immediately transfers to the next of kin.”
“Which is Felix,” I said.
“Which is Felix. And under Illinois marital law, unless there is an ironclad prenuptial agreement—which there isn't—any income generated from those shares during the marriage is considered marital property subject to joint equitable distribution. If Felix gets control, Rya gets control. And if Felix were to, say, suffer an unexpected medical tragedy three months after gaining control…”
Victoria didn't need to finish the sentence.
The game wasn't just to humiliate me. The game was to break me, take the shares through Felix, and then dispose of Felix once the money was safely routed through offshore shell accounts.
My heart seized at the thought. They didn't just want my money; my son’s life was in danger. His naivety wasn't just foolish anymore—it was potentially fatal.
“Tell me about Rya’s family,” I said, turning to Marcus.
Marcus tapped a tablet on the table, projecting four profiles onto the wall. “The people at the wedding who claimed to be her parents—'Arthur and Eleanor Sterling'—are paid actors from an agency in Atlanta. Their real names are Arthur Higgins and Martha Ray. They’ve done three corporate grifts with Croft over the last decade. They specialize in playing old-money patricians who fell on hard times. They were paid twenty-five thousand dollars each to sit at the head table and look dignified.”
“And Rya’s actual background?”
“Mother died when she was twelve. Father is currently serving eight years in federal prison for wire fraud in Terre Haute. Celeste Vance is a product of her environment. She’s smart, sociopathic, and entirely motivated by the fear of being poor.”
I stared at the glowing screen. For a second, a fleeting second, I saw myself in her.
Not the cruelty. Not the psychopathy. But the bone-deep terror of poverty.
When my husband, Richard, died, Felix was six years old. Richard hadn't just died; he had been destroyed by men who loaned him money for a failed real estate venture. When the heart attack took him in our rented kitchen, the debt collectors didn't even wait for the casket to close. They came to my door. They threatened my boy. They told me that if Richard’s debts weren't cleared, Felix would disappear on his walk home from elementary school.
That was the night I stopped being Dela Morrison, the quiet schoolteacher.
That was the night I took three night-shift cleaning jobs, scrubbed the toilets of Harold Weinstein’s corporate headquarters, caught Harold working late, showed him an error in his commercial lease valuations that saved him two million dollars, and demanded he teach me how to buy and sell the world.
I hid the money because the men who hunted Richard were still out there for the first ten years. By the time they were dead or in prison, Felix was already eighteen, and I realized something terrifying: my son didn't have my armor. He hadn't bled for the bread on his table. If I handed him fifty million dollars, he would become the target Richard had been.
I had tried to build him a shield. Instead, I had built him a blindfold.
“Dela?” Victoria’s voice cut through my thoughts. “How do you want to handle the probate petition?”
I looked at the documents on the table. My eyes hardened.
“We don't fight it,” I said.
Victoria frowned. “Excuse me?”
“If we fight it in court, Croft drags this out for eighteen months. The press gets hold of it. Morrison Real Estate stock drops twenty percent. Felix digs his heels in deeper, convinced his evil billionaire mother is using her high-priced lawyers to crush his sweet young wife.”
“Then what do you propose?”
“I’m going to call my son,” I said, reaching for my phone. “I’m going to apologize to him. I’m going to tell him that the wedding was a wake-up call. That I realize I’ve been paranoid and controlling, and that I want to make things right.”
Marcus narrowed his eyes. “You’re walking into the spider’s web.”
May you like
“No, Marcus,” I said, looking at the two of them with a cold, terrifying smile that I hadn't used since Harold Weinstein and I bankrupted the Chicago Syndicate in ninety-four. “I am inviting the spider into the furnace.”
***
