Chapter 7 - The Desperate Strike
Two weeks after the wedding scandal, the news of Harrison’s termination and the pending criminal investigation leaked to the Chicago Tribune.
The headline read: "GALLAGHER DEVELOPMENT EMPIRE SHUTTERS HEIR AMID EMBEZZLEMENT SCANDAL."
The Sterling family’s reputation was destroyed overnight. Country clubs revoked their memberships, banks froze their credit lines, and the high-society circles that Chloe had tried so desperately to conquer completely shut their doors against them.
On a rainy Thursday evening, I returned home from the office around 7:00 PM.
As Michael pulled the town car into the driveway of our Lincoln Park home, I noticed a rusty, rented sedan parked near the iron gates. Standing in the pouring rain, soaked to the bone, was Chloe Sterling.
She had lost weight. Her hair hung in wet strands across her face, and her designer clothes looked rumpled and dirty.
As I stepped out of the car under Michael’s umbrella, Chloe ran toward me, slipping on the wet pavement before catching herself against the iron fence.
"Mr. Gallagher! Mr. Gallagher, please!" she begged, her voice high and shrill over the sound of the falling rain. "You have to stop the police! You have to drop the charges!"
I stopped, looking at her with cold disinterest. "You shouldn't be here, Chloe. There is a legal restraining order barring you from this property."
"My father was arrested an hour ago!" she sobbed, clutching the iron bars of the gate. "The FBI raided our house in Lake Forest! They took everything! They took my mother's jewelry, the furniture... everything!"
"Your father stole 1.2 million dollars from my company, Chloe," I said calmly. "Did you really think I wouldn't notice?"
"Harrison gave him that money!" she screamed, her face twisting into rage. "Harrison promised me we would be rich! He promised me he would be running Gallagher Development by the end of the year! He told me you were an old man who was going to retire!"
"And you believed him," I said. "You believed him so completely that you felt comfortable helping him humiliate my wife on your wedding day."
"I'm sorry!" she cried, dropping to her knees on the wet sidewalk, her hands covered in mud. "I'm sorry about the cake! I'm sorry about the glue! I'll publicly apologize to Martha! I'll go on TV and say whatever you want! Just please... tell the police my father didn't know!"
I looked down at her kneeling in the mud. There was no genuine remorse in her eyes—only the frantic, terrified desperation of a parasite that had lost its host.
"You're not sorry you hurt Martha, Chloe," I repeated the words I had given my son. "You're only sorry that the ride is over."
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I signaled to Michael. "Call the district police. Have her removed for violating the restraining order."
I walked through the gates and closed them firmly behind me, leaving Chloe screaming in the rain while the red lights of a police cruiser approached down the avenue.
