Chapter 12 - A Mother's Desperation
While Julian was transporting Sarah to safety, Victoria Sterling was sitting in the back of a tinted limousine parked outside the Federal District Court in downtown San Francisco. Her cell phone buzzed relentlessly on the leather seat beside her. Marcus sat opposite his mother, his hands shaking so violently he could barely hold a glass of scotch.
“We’re ruined, Mom,” Marcus stammered, taking a desperate gulp of the amber liquid. “Julian fired us. The board froze our accounts. Vanessa just texted me saying Julian found the art gallery basement! He has the nanny! He has everything!”
Victoria slapped the phone out of Marcus’s hand, sending it clattering onto the floorboards of the limousine. Her eyes were bloodshot, her perfectly coiffed hair finally unraveling around her face like a crown of thorns.
“Pull yourself together, you pathetic coward!” Victoria hissed, leaning forward so her sharp features were inches from her son’s face. “As long as Julian cannot physically present those children to the probate judge by 5:00 PM today, his legal claim to the estate trust remains contested! Arthur hasn't filed the DNA paperwork with the court yet because the courthouse servers are undergoing midday maintenance!”
Marcus blinked, his alcohol-addled brain trying to process her words. “What are you saying, Mom? The kids are at Julian’s safehouse! We don't even know where it is!”
“We don't need to know where the safehouse is,” Victoria said, a terrifying, cold smile stretching across her lips as she pulled a secondary, untraceable burner phone from her purse. “Because I know Julian. He’s sentimental. He wouldn't leave his precious new daughters in a bunker in the woods while he's back in the city handling business. He transferred them to his secure penthouse on California Street an hour ago. My inside contact on his building’s concierge desk just confirmed it.”
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Marcus’s eyes widened in horror. “Mom... what are you going to do?”
“I am going to do what I should have done three years ago at that hospice,” Victoria said coldly as she dialed a foreign number on the burner phone. “I am hiring a professional extraction team from the docks. If those two little girls disappear over the Golden Gate Bridge before the courts close today, Julian will have no heirs, no legal standing to break the ancestral trust, and you will get your distribution money to pay off your gamblers.”
