Chapter 4 - The Poisoned Will
While Serena lay in a coma on the 4th floor, the city’s financial district was unraveling at breakneck speed.
By 6:00 AM on Monday morning, the video footage recovered from Serena’s phone had been leaked to every major news network in the country. The footage didn't just contain audio—the wide-angle lens placed under the table had captured Julian Sterling handing Victoria Vance a small glass vial containing a colorless liquid fifteen minutes before the fall.
BILLIONAIRE HEIR JULIAN STERLING CONSPIRING TO MURDER PREGNANT SISTER-IN-LAW. VICTORIA VANCE ARRESTED FOR ATTEMPTED MURDER AT ST. REGIS GALA.
The headlines were pinned to every newspaper rack in the financial quarter.
Inside the glass-walled penthouse suite of the Sterling Maritime Tower, a crisis board meeting had been called. Twelve senior board members sat around the grand mahogany table, their faces pale as they looked at the legal documents laid out before them.
Harrison stepped into the boardroom. He hadn't slept in thirty-six hours. He had changed into a clean black suit, but his eyes were cold, sunken, and dangerous.
Julian Sterling was sitting at the far end of the table, flanked by three high-priced defense attorneys. Julian was wearing handcuffs, supervised by two State Police officers who had agreed to let him attend the mandatory board meeting before his formal arraignment.
"This is an outrage, Harrison!" Julian blustered, trying to maintain a facade of confidence despite his sweating forehead. "That video was AI-generated! It’s a sophisticated deepfake engineered by Serena to ruin my reputation and force me out of the family trust!"
Harrison walked slowly up the length of the boardroom. He didn't say a word. He didn't raise his voice. He simply reached into his briefcase and pulled out a heavy black leather ledger, slamming it onto the center of the table.
The loud THUD echoed like a gunshot.
"This is our late father Arthur’s private personal journal," Harrison said, his voice flat and smooth as ice. "Recovered three hours ago from the safe-deposit box Victoria Vance attempted to clean out at the Swiss Commerce Bank in Chicago."
Julian froze. His hands began to shiver inside the iron cuffs.
Harrison opened the ledger to a bookmarked page with a red silk ribbon.
"Two years ago," Harrison read aloud, his eyes burning into Julian, "father discovered that you weren't just gambling away your quarterly dividends, Julian. He found out you were secretly shorting Sterling Maritime stock through offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, hoping to crash our company value so you could sell our deep-water ports to foreign investors."
"That's a lie!" Julian shouted, standing up so fast his chair screeched against the floor. "Father was senile!"
"When father threatened to disinherit you," Harrison continued calmly, turning the page, "you bribed his personal physician—Dr. Robert Vance, Victoria’s uncle—to alter his medication dosage, accelerating his stroke."
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The entire boardroom erupted into shocked, furious whispers.
"You didn't just try to kill my wife and daughter on that staircase on Saturday night, Julian," Harrison whispered, leaning down until his face was inches from his brother's terrified eyes. "You murdered our father two years ago."
