Chapter 8 - The Ultimate Betrayal
"You're insane," I whispered, staring at my ex-husband with a mixture of revulsion and cold fury. "You think you can just walk back into our lives after eight years of absolute silence and steal my son?!"
"I'm not stealing him, Natalie, I'm rescuing him," Richard said smoothly, adjusting his cuffs. "From your perspective, you're a devoted mother. From a judge's perspective, you're the woman who left her child with a psychopath because you cared more about a corporate business trip in Denver."
His words hit me like a physical blow. He was going to use my biggest regret—that single, fatal mistake of trusting my mother—as a weapon to rip Eli away from me.
"Get out of my house," I said, my voice dropping into a lethal, trembling register.
"Think about it over the weekend, Natalie," Richard said, dropping the manila envelope onto the entryway console table. "I'll be staying at the Brown Palace Hotel downtown. My lawyer will file the emergency custody petition on Monday morning at 9:00 a.m. sharp. Cooperate, and we can make this civilized. Fight me, and I'll make sure you never see your son again."
With that, he turned on his heel, walked out the front door, and descended the front steps toward a waiting black Lincoln Navigator.
I stood in the hallway, staring at the envelope on the table. My hands shook so violently I could barely breathe.
My mother had tried to destroy us from the inside out for money. And now my ex-husband had crawled out of the woodwork like a vulture, smelling blood in the water, ready to finish the job.
I grabbed my phone and dialed Victor’s private security number.
"Victor," I said the second he answered. "I need you to pull every financial record, every offshore account, and every dirty secret Richard Sterling has accumulated over the last ten years."
"Mr. Sterling?" Victor asked, surprised. "Isn't he living in London?"
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"He just landed in Denver," I said coldly. "And he thinks he can take my son. Find me everything we have on him. By Monday morning, I want to own him."
"Consider it done, Mrs. Mercer," Victor replied.
