Chapter 9 - THE MAN WHO TOOK THE MONEY
Police were notified.
Security around Leo doubled.
Julian also hired an independent investigator.
By afternoon, they had traced the old fifty-thousand-dollar payment authorization to a law office.
Cross & Meyer.
The firm no longer existed.
One partner was dead.
The other, Daniel Cross, was living outside Milwaukee.
Julian called him.
Daniel hung up.
Julian called again.
Daniel threatened legal action.
Sarah took the phone.
“My name is Sarah Morgan.”
Silence.
Then Daniel whispered.
“I wondered when you would find me.”
They drove to Wisconsin that evening.
Daniel lived alone in a modest house near the lake.
He looked older than his sixty-two years.
He refused money.
He refused coffee.
He simply sat across from them.
“Victoria Sterling’s father hired me.”
Sarah’s stomach tightened.
“For what?”
“To protect a business agreement between the Sterling family and Vance International.”
Julian leaned forward.
“What did Sarah have to do with it?”
Daniel looked at him.
“You were supposed to marry Victoria.”
Julian laughed once.
“I wasn’t even dating her then.”
“Your fathers had other expectations.”
Daniel explained.
Five years earlier, Sterling Holdings had been drowning in hidden debt.
A merger with Vance International could save the company.
But Julian’s grandfather had written an unusual clause into the Vance family trust.
If Julian had a biological child before age forty, a large block of voting shares would transfer into a protected trust for that child.
Until the child reached adulthood, the child’s legal guardian would control the voting proxy.
Sarah stared at him.
“You mean me.”
Daniel nodded.
“If Leo is Julian’s biological son, yes.”
Julian’s face hardened.
“How large a block?”
“Eighteen percent.”
Silence.
That was enough to stop almost any merger.
Enough to change board control.
Enough to make Sarah, a woman polishing ballroom floors, one of the most powerful voting proxies in Vance International.
Sarah shook her head.
“I never knew.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
Daniel looked ashamed.
“Arthur Sterling paid me to prepare the rejection letter.”
“Victoria delivered the information.”
“And I arranged the payment.”
Julian stood.
“You forged my signature?”
Daniel nodded.
“Yes.”
“Why are you admitting this now?”
Daniel looked toward Sarah.
“Because Arthur Sterling died three years ago.”
“And because I have spent five years waiting for someone to ask me the right question.”
Sarah stared at him.
“What question?”
Daniel swallowed.
“Why didn’t Victoria simply let you leave?”
Sarah felt cold.
Daniel continued.
“Because keeping you poor and invisible was not enough.”
“She needed to know where Leo was.”
“She needed to know whether you could prove who his father was.”
“And last month, she learned something that terrified her.”
Julian leaned forward.
“What?”
Daniel looked directly at him.
“She learned the trust activates automatically on Leo’s fifth birthday.”
Sarah’s breath caught.
May you like
Leo would turn five in nine days.
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