Chapter 12 - Sins of the Father
Julian sat in his private study behind locked doors, the amber glow of a single desk lamp illuminating the aged handwriting of Alexander Sterling. His father’s scrawl was aggressive, commanding, yet carrying the tremor of a dying man.
Julian, the letter began.
If you are reading this, it means you have consolidated the family assets and eliminated the vultures circling our perimeter. I never doubted your strength, but I always feared your conscience. You were always too good for the world we built.
There is a truth I took to my grave that you must now shoulder. Sofia was not your cousin. She was my illegitimate daughter, born to Arthur Vance’s younger sister during our war for the shipping routes in the nineties. I raised her in the family fold as a niece to disguise my betrayal of Arthur’s bloodline. Arthur never knew the truth.
If Sofia has moved against you, she did so out of a blood vengeance she was groomed to execute since childhood. Beware of Arthur’s sister, Julian. The Vance bloodline does not forgive, and the empire you think you secured is built over a graveyard that has not finished claiming its dead.
Julian’s breath hitched in his throat. He dropped the paper onto the desk, his mind racing through the past fifteen years. The subtle glances between Arthur and Sofia at family galas. The sudden wire transfers. The sheer, irrational hatred Sofia had displayed toward Elena wasn't just corporate jealousy—it was an inherited poison passed down through generations.
Julian rose and went to the large floor-to-ceiling glass wall overlooking the illuminated skyline. Below, the city sprawled like a grid of electric circuits, oblivious to the blood shed in high towers to keep it spinning.
May you like
The intercom on his desk buzzed sharply.
"Mr. Sterling," the voice of his exterior security lead barked through the speaker. "We have a perimeter breach at the lobby level. A woman claiming to be Julian Sterling’s aunt has bypassed the front desk with a judicial order."
