Chapter 4 - The Unspoken Pawn
Camille Bennett lived in an ivory cage on the forty-second floor of a luxury condominium on East 72nd Street. The apartment was pristine, devoid of clutter, and smelled of white lilies and high-end antiseptic. When Clara knocked on the heavy oak door twenty-four hours after the confrontation at Sterling Tower, Camille did not call the building concierge. She opened the door slowly, her face pale and drawn, her silk wrap dress falling loosely over the prominent twenty-two-week swell of her belly.
"Are you here to throw acid in my face?" Camille asked. Her voice was devoid of the sharp, condescending polish she had used in executive strategy sessions. It was the voice of a cornered animal that had run out of territory.
"May I come in?" Clara asked.
Camille stepped back without answering. Inside the open-plan living room, four large cardboard moving boxes were already stacked against the marble fireplace. The Sterling crisis-management machine was already in motion; the mistress was being erased from the corporate record before the scandal could metastasize to the financial press.
"They're putting me on a private charter to Tuscany tomorrow evening," Camille said, sinking heavily onto an armchair and wrapping both arms protectively around her stomach. "Arthur’s private security team arrived at six this morning. They took my corporate phone, wiped my personal laptop, and handed me a non-disclosure agreement with a ten-million-dollar liquidated damages penalty. If I talk to a journalist, if I attempt to contact Grant, or if I ever publicly assert that this baby has any claim to the Sterling estate, they will initiate civil fraud proceedings against my father's architectural firm and petition for protective custody of the infant the moment he is delivered."
Clara stood near the window, looking down at the crawling traffic of the avenue below. For seventy-two hours, she had felt a scorching, acidic hatred for this woman—a burning rage at the thought of Camille lying in Grant's arms while Clara was being injected with hormones in an examination room three miles away. But looking at Camille now, observing the dark, bruise-like rings beneath her eyes and the reflexive, trembling terror with which she cradled her unborn child, Clara felt that hatred evaporate into a cold, clarifying clarity.
"Did you know?" Clara asked quietly, turning around. "About the donor?"
Camille looked up, tears finally spilling over her lashes, carving clean tracks through her foundation. "Grant told me he had frozen his own samples before undergoing radiation for a benign thyroid issue five years ago. He swore to me on his mother’s memory that the child was his. He told me you knew everything, Clara. He told me you were sterile, that you were too proud to pursue formal adoption, but that you had consented to let an executive surrogate carry his biological heir so long as it was kept completely separate from your social circle."
She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with dry, ragged sobs. "I was an ambitious, stupid fool. I thought he loved me. I thought he saw a partner in me. I thought we were building an empire together."
"Grant doesn't build empires, Camille," Clara said, her tone gentle yet firm. "He inherits them, mismanages them, and burns every woman who enters his orbit to keep himself warm when the frost sets in."
Clara walked across the room, knelt down in front of the armchair, and did what no member of the Sterling family had ever conceived of doing: she reached out and placed her hand over Camille’s trembling fingers.
"Do not sign their paperwork," Clara said. "Do not get on that plane to Tuscany."
May you like
Camille stared at her through reddened, tear-filled eyes, bewildered. "Why would you help me? I was the instrument of your humiliation. I destroyed your home."
"My home was built on quicksand and calculated deceit long before you arrived," Clara replied steadily. "And that child in your womb didn't ask to be manufactured as a tax-deductible successor for a sociopathic dynasty. If you go to Florence, Arthur’s attorneys will isolate you in a villa with private nurses, seize that baby the second the umbilical cord is cut, and bury you under legal gag orders until you don't even remember your own name. If you want to keep your son, Camille, you pack your bags right now. You come with me."
