Chapter 5 - AMANDA'S WARNING
Willow did not sleep.
At four in the morning, she sat at her father’s scarred kitchen table with coffee growing cold between her hands.
Her phone contained forty-three missed calls.
Most were from Lucas.
Six were from Richard.
Three were from Marion Sterling.
One was from an unknown number.
Then a text arrived.
DO NOT GO TO THE BOARD MEETING ALONE.
Willow stared at it.
Another message appeared.
LUCAS DID THIS BEFORE.
Willow’s pulse quickened.
WHO IS THIS?
The response came immediately.
AMANDA.
Lucas’s first wife.
Willow stood so suddenly the chair scraped backward.
Michael looked up.
“What?”
Willow showed him the screen.
Amanda Sterling had disappeared from Chicago society almost eight years earlier.
The Sterling version was simple.
She was unstable.
Difficult.
Unfaithful.
Lucas had been heartbroken.
Willow had believed him.
Amanda sent an address.
A twenty-four-hour diner near Lincoln Park.
Michael drove Willow there before sunrise.
Amanda was waiting in a booth at the back.
She looked nothing like the photographs Willow had seen.
No diamonds.
No couture.
Just jeans, a dark sweater, and cautious eyes.
The moment Willow sat down, Amanda looked at her bruised cheek.
“He finally hit you where people could see.”
Willow’s stomach tightened.
“He hit you too?”
Amanda gave a humorless smile.
“Never in front of witnesses.”
She reached into her bag.
“I left because I discovered the accounts.”
Willow froze.
“What accounts?”
Amanda slid a flash drive across the table.
“Sterling subsidiaries were moving money through charities, art foundations, consulting companies, anything Richard thought regulators wouldn’t examine.”
“Lucas helped.”
Willow whispered.
“Yes.”
Amanda’s eyes filled with anger.
“I threatened to go to the authorities.”
“Two days later, Richard showed me documents proving my brother’s company had supposedly committed tax fraud.”
“They said they would destroy him unless I signed the divorce settlement and disappeared.”
“Was the evidence real?”
“No.”
“I learned that later.”
Willow closed her eyes.
Amanda leaned forward.
“They destroyed my reputation so nobody would believe me.”
“The same thing started happening to you three months ago.”
Willow looked up.
“What?”
Amanda took out her phone.
Screenshots filled the screen.
Anonymous gossip accounts.
Posts claiming Willow was unstable.
Drinking heavily.
Having affairs.
Mismanaging her gallery.
Willow had seen some of them.
She had dismissed them as internet garbage.
Amanda shook her head.
“They were preparing the story.”
“For what?”
“For the day you found the money.”
Willow stared at the flash drive.
Amanda’s voice dropped.
“They weren’t planning to divorce you, Willow.”
May you like
“They were planning to make sure nobody believed you.”
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