“My goodness, Vivienne. What are you doing here?” Chloe drawled, evaluating my off-the-rack coat with undisguised contempt. “The gala is strictly restricted to invited corporate guests and legitimate family.”
“I brought Sophia down to surprise Dominic,” I replied, holding my six-year-old daughter’s hand tightly. She was clutching a handmade paper necklace she had spent all afternoon coloring for her father.
Chloe’s laughter was a brittle, ugly sound.
“Surprise him? Your presence here is a massive liability, Vivienne. The executive vice president’s real family is already networking upstairs. His gorgeous fiancée, his brilliant young son, and his future in-laws.”
The air in my lungs turned to ash.
“Having you loitering down here is extremely distasteful,” she projected loudly to the staring socialites in the lobby. “Leave before I call security to escort you out.”
“Mommy, where’s Daddy?” Sophia whimpered, burying her face in my coat.
Her trembling voice severed my paralyzing shock. A dormant, tectonic rage began to rumble deep within my chest. I dropped to one knee to gently cover Sophia’s ears, then stood back up, locking my gaze onto Chloe’s smirk with a clarity so freezing it could shatter glass.
I pulled out my phone and dialed the private, encrypted line of the most dangerous fixer on the eastern seaboard.
“Who are you calling?” Chloe sneered. “Your poor mother in the suburbs to cry about it?”
She had absolutely no idea that my maiden name was Sterling. Vivienne Sterling.
In the United States, anyone operating within high finance, federal politics, or elite commercial real estate spoke the Sterling name with hushed, absolute reverence. We were an old-money empire. I was the youngest sibling to three titans: Arthur Sterling, a prominent U.S. Senator; Edward Sterling, Executive VP of Sovereign Heritage Trust; and Victor Sterling, the CEO of Sterling Capital and the undisputed shadow-king of corporate fixers.
