Chapter 6 - The Viper Strikes Back
By midnight, the penthouse suite of the St. Regis Hotel was buzzing with activity.
Maya was fast asleep in a king-sized bed topped with Egyptian cotton, clutching a plush teddy bear that room service had delivered alongside a feast of roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and chocolate soufflé. For the first time in her young life, she didn't hear the clinking of heating pipes or the shouting of drunken neighbors through paper-thin walls.
In the living room, Clara sat on a sofa, dressed in clean cashmere lounge wear Eleanor had ordered from the luxury boutiques downstairs. Clara’s chapped hands were wrapped around a mug of chamomile tea. Across from her, Eleanor sat with two corporate attorneys and Ross Miller.
"Victoria is moving faster than anticipated," Arthur Sterling, Eleanor’s lead corporate counsel (and no relation to Victoria), adjusted his glasses. "She’s leveraged her position as executive director of the Vance Charity Foundation. She’s leaked a story to the financial tabloids: *'Billionaire Matriarch Eleanor Vance Suffers Public Breakdown at Birthday Gala, Yields to Unknown Grifters.'*"
Arthur slid an iPad across the marble coffee table. The screen showed an article published just twenty minutes prior, accompanied by a blurry photograph of Eleanor kneeling beside Maya on the ballroom floor. The headline painted Eleanor as an aging, senile woman being manipulated by scammers.
Clara looked at the screen, her fists clenching so hard her knuckles turned white. "She’s going to use this to take Maya from me. She’ll claim I’m an extortionist."
"She won't touch you, Clara," Eleanor said firmly, her voice radiating absolute calm. "Because tomorrow, we don't just defend ourselves. We obliterate her."
Eleanor turned to Ross. "Did you secure the files from my private safe?"
Ross nodded. He set a heavy leather briefcase on the table and popped the brass latches. "Seven years ago, when the two hundred thousand dollars went missing, Victoria claimed the money was taken in cash. But our forensic accountant reviewed the foundation’s shadow ledgers tonight."
Ross pulled out a stack of financial statements, pointing to a series of highlighted transactions.
"The money was never taken in cash from the house," Ross explained. "Victoria funneled two hundred thousand dollars out of the Vance Children’s Medical Charity through an offshore shell company registered in the Cayman Islands. She used that exact sum three days later to purchase a luxury condominium in Miami under her maiden name."
Clara leaned forward, her eyes flashing with disbelief. "She stole from sick children and blamed me?"
"That’s only the beginning," Ross added. "We pulled the security archives from the estate’s auxiliary server—the one Victoria thought was erased during the 2017 system upgrade. It wasn't erased. We found the audio files. Victoria used a voice-synthesis program to piece together words from Mrs. Vance’s recorded keynote speeches to create that fake phone call."
Eleanor’s eyes grew cold. "She took my voice to destroy my child."
"We have enough to arrest her right now, Mrs. Vance," Arthur said. "Grand larceny, corporate fraud, extortion."
"No," Eleanor countered, her voice dropping into a deadly whisper. "If the police arrest her at her apartment, her lawyers will post bail before sunrise, and she will spin this as a corporate coup. She wants the board meeting tomorrow morning. She wants an audience."
Eleanor rose from her chair, looking out through the floor-to-ceiling glass at the glowing skyline of the city she had helped build.
"I gave that girl a home when her parents went bankrupt," Eleanor said softly. "I paid for her education in Paris. I treated her like a niece, gave her an executive salary, and introduced her to high society. In return, she left my daughter in an unheated room and kicked my granddaughter onto a marble floor."
Eleanor turned around, her eyes burning with a fierce, terrifying intensity.
May you like
"Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, I want the board room locked from the outside. No one leaves until Victoria Sterling is carried out in handcuffs."
***
