Page 5

Victoria stared blankly at the monitor. Her mind raced at an insane speed, violently piecing the history of her life back together.

Harrison had lied.

He had erased the only actual family she had left to ensure her isolated dependence on his empire.

He wanted absolute control over Emily's children, and Joe Anderson was a threat. So he killed Joe off in a conversation, intercepting the mail, blocking the phone calls, turning Victoria into a captive orphan.

A physical ache clamped down on Victoria's throat. Joe hadn't died of a broken heart. He had been alive this entire time. A sickening question twisted in Victoria’s stomach.

If he was alive... why didn't he ever try to find us?

A single tear spilled over Victoria's lower lash line, hot and furious. It tracked down her cheek, dropping onto the collar of her blouse. She didn't wipe it away.

"Miss Sterling? Are you still there?"

Victoria blinked, the wetness clinging to her eyelashes. She sat up straight. Grief hardened in her chest, turning instantly to razor focus. The patient executive vanished. In her place was a woman who had just realized the depth of the wrong done to her.

"Email me the details. I will be there."

Victoria placed the receiver back onto the cradle. She grabbed her cell phone from the desk, her thumb flying over the screen. She booked a first-class ticket to London Heathrow for the following evening.

The morning sun filtering through the windows of the Tribeca penthouse was brutally bright.

Victoria stood by the marble kitchen island. Her suitcase waited by the front door. She hadn’t slept, too busy pacing the hardwood floors, meticulously restructuring the timeline for her exit strategy.

The buzzer for the private elevator chimed. Chloe slipped out of her trench coat, shaking off the drizzle. At twenty-nine, she was Victoria’s complete opposite. She possessed an effortless warmth. She was an art restorer at a Chelsea gallery—a career Victoria had fiercely insulated from Harrison's reach.

"Just so you know," Chloe said, tossing her canvas tote onto a chair and walking straight to the island, where the printed archive page from the Rosebrook Gazette was waiting. "I read your text in the cab. Please tell me you're having a psychotic break and didn't actually drag me out of bed to tell me Dad faked a relative's death."

Victoria didn't answer. She just pushed the photograph of Joe Anderson sitting by his stone hearth an inch closer.

Chloe stared down at the paper, the humor draining from her face as the reality of the timeline sank in. She sank onto an acrylic barstool. "Twenty-eight years," she whispered, bewildered disbelief tightening her voice. "He looked you in the eye after Mom's funeral and told you the old man died of grief. Why go that far? Dad is officially a clinical sociopath."

"Control," Victoria said, the word tasting like ash. "If Joe had been around, there could have been a custody dispute. Harrison would have had to deal with actual family. It was easier to erase him. And now the solicitor needs me in England on Monday to unseal the will."

Chloe nodded slowly, a spark of sharp anger igniting beneath her relaxed demeanor. "So you're flying to London tonight?"

"Yes. I booked a suite in a nearby town," Victoria said, her lips pressing into a hard line. "I'm taking a one-week leave. Just enough time to attend the reading and see what’s left of the estate. Once that is done, I'll hand the file to local lawyers and handle the liquidation from New York."

Chloe twisted a strand of hair around her finger. "Vic, are you sure? You’ve only got a year and a half left until your equity vests. He'll crush you if he thinks you're slipping his leash."

"Let him try," Victoria replied quietly, thinking of the airtight exit strategy her lawyers were holding in the shadows. "I know where every body is buried in that firm because I dug the graves myself."

Chloe stepped in, wrapping her arms around Victoria’s waist in a fierce hug. "Promise me you won't let him get inside your head."

"I promise," Victoria murmured, squeezing Chloe’s wrists. "Keep your head down while I'm gone. If Harrison calls, play dumb."

Chloe offered a conspiratorial smirk. "I won't give him an inch."

Victoria looked at the photograph one last time. The ache in her chest settled into absolute resolve. She was going to open the will, liquidate whatever Joe had left behind, and return to New York.

When the countdown hit zero, she was going to walk away with her millions and never look back.

Chapter Three

Victoria

The silence in the penthouse suite was unbearable.