Chapter 4 - The Legacy of Guilt
By three o'clock in the morning, the hospital floor had been transformed into an operational war room for Carter Enterprises. Dr. Robert Chen, one of the top heart surgeons in the country, had been flown in from Boston and was already inside Room 412 preparing Sarah Morrison for emergency surgery.
In the private waiting room, Lucy was sound asleep on a suede sofa, wrapped in James's overcoat. Chloe sat across from James, drinking a cup of warm tea he had brought her, the hostility in her posture slowly giving way to sheer exhaustion.
"Where have you been living, Chloe?" James asked, sitting in a chair nearby, reviewing financial documents on his tablet.
Chloe stared into her paper cup. "A two-room apartment on 115th Street. The landlord turned off the heat two weeks ago because we were late on rent. Mom was working eighteen-hour shifts at a commercial laundry facility, trying to earn enough for rent and Lucy's school supplies. She collapsed on Tuesday."
"And the men in the alley?"
Chloe’s hands tightened around her cup. "A loan shark named Arthur Pendelton. My mother borrowed five thousand dollars from him six months ago to pay for Lucy's asthma medication. Pendelton added insane interest rates. He said... he said if we couldn't pay by midnight tonight, he would take Lucy and me to clear the debt."
James's eyes darkened into cold steel. "Pendelton."
He knew the name. Arthur Pendelton was a notorious predatory lender who operated in the shadows of Chicago's working-class neighborhoods, taking advantage of desperate people. But more importantly, Pendelton was a sub-contractor for Vance & Sterling Acquisitions—a shell company that James’s corrupt uncle, Richard Carter, had secretly operated before James ousted him from the board three years ago.
The pieces were beginning to fit together into a terrifying picture.
Sarah Morrison’s poverty wasn't an accident of bad luck. She had been systematically hunted, blacklisted from employment, and driven into extreme debt by someone who wanted to ensure she never reclaimed her father's rightful shares in Carter Enterprises.
"Your mother didn't just fall ill, Chloe," James said quietly, leaning forward. "Someone has been actively suppressing her."
Chloe looked up, her eyes wide. "Who?"
Before James could answer, his tablet chimed with an urgent notification from his legal team. Attached was an old, heavily redacted document from his father's estate archives. It was a trust agreement signed in 2011, establishing that upon Thomas Sterling's death, forty percent of the founding stock of Carter Enterprises was to be held in trust for Sarah Sterling and her heirs.
May you like
Stock currently worth over four billion dollars.
Stock that Richard Carter had been illegally voting on for over a decade.
