Chapter 5 - The Favorite Son
“Helena?” Eleanor choked out the name, her gaze snapping toward Julian with genuine agony. “You... you used your grandmother’s name for an alias?”
Julian backed away from the table, his breath coming in shallow, jagged gasps. “Mother, listen to me. I had to create an emergency backup. If the feds looked into the art gallery, they would have seized every asset linked to your name. I was protecting you! I was going to bring you over once the dust settled!”
“With one ticket?” Clara challenged, crossing her arms. “The private charter has only one traveler listed on the diplomatic clearance, Julian. I printed the flight plan an hour before dinner. You were running. You were going to let your mother take the fall for the fraudulent invoices, let Marcus take the blame for the drained trust, and disappear to a country with no extradition treaty for financial crimes.”
Eleanor stared at Julian as though seeing a complete stranger. The golden boy she had spent thirty years grooming, protecting, and favoring over Marcus had just wrapped the executioner’s noose around her neck. “Julian... tell me she’s lying. Tell me right now.”
Julian didn't answer. His eyes darted nervously between the mahogany doors, Marcus blocking the path, and Clara holding all the cards. The smooth, charming executive was gone, replaced by a cornered, panicked animal.
“You ruin everything, Clara,” Julian snarled, his voice dropping into a desperate, hateful hiss. “You were supposed to be the quiet, obedient little nobody from the public university. I gave you this house. I gave you this name! You would be clerking in a dingy county courthouse if I hadn’t married you!”
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“And you’d be serving twenty years in a federal penitentiary if you hadn’t married someone smart enough to fix your accounting errors,” Clara replied coldly. “Except tonight, I didn't fix them. I forwarded them.”
Outside the massive arched windows of the dining room, headlights swept across the manicured lawns. Tires crunched heavily against the gravel driveway, followed by the muffled thump of car doors slamming shut in unison.
