Chapter 17 - Victoria’s Last Stand
While Julian’s press conference was broadcasting live on every major news network across the globe, Victoria Sterling was trapped inside the ancestral Sterling Manor in the exclusive Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. Outside the wrought-iron gates, the red and blue lights of twelve FBI cruisers flashed through the fog, accompanied by a swarm of news helicopters buzzing overhead like angry hornets.
Inside the grand, wood-paneled library of the manor, Victoria was frantically throwing stacks of leather-bound ledgers and personal journals into the roaring stone fireplace. Her fingers were blackened with soot, her silk dress was stained with ash, and her breath came in ragged, hysterical gasps as she watched the evidence of her thirty-year financial manipulation burn to cinders.
“You can't prove anything, Julian!” Victoria screamed at the empty room, tossing a framed photograph of Clara into the flames where the glass shattered from the heat. “Without those papers, it’s just the word of a hired nanny and a degenerate gambler against the matriarch of this city!”
The heavy oak doors of the library didn't open with a polite knock; they were splintered off their brass hinges by a heavy tactical breaching ram.
Six federal FBI agents in full tactical gear flooded into the room, their weapons leveled at the fireplace. “FBI! Step away from the fire! Put your hands on your head and drop to your knees right now!”
Victoria stood her ground by the hearth, drawing herself up to her full height, her chin raised with toxic, unyielding pride. “Do you know who I am? I am Victoria Sterling! I built the foundation of this city! I will not be ordered around by common civil servants!”
From behind the wall of federal agents, a tall figure stepped forward into the firelight. It was Julian. He had left the press conference directly for the manor, wanting to witness the end of his mother’s reign of terror with his own eyes.
“You built nothing, Mother,” Julian said coldly, his voice echoing over the crackle of the burning ledgers. “You inherited my father’s hard work, and then you spent twenty years trying to destroy the only genuine love and happiness I ever found because you were terrified of sharing your money with someone you deemed beneath your social class.”
Victoria sneered at him, her eyes cold and empty of any maternal warmth. “I protected your bloodline from a girl who smelled of the suburbs, Julian. You should be down on your knees thanking me for having the strength to do what you were too weak to do.”
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“Take her out of my sight,” Julian said to the lead FBI agent, turning his back on her without a single ounce of pity.
As the steel handcuffs clicked shut around Victoria’s wrists and she was dragged screaming out of the grand library toward the waiting police cruisers, Julian stood by the window, watching the smoke clear from the room. The curse over his family was finally broken.
