Chapter 9 - The Ashes of the Empire
The fallout was swift and absolute.
The government seized the Sterling estate. The cars, the vacation homes in Aspen, the offshore accounts—all of it was liquidated to pay back the university and the investors my father had defrauded.
Dr. Montgomery, true to his word, used the recovered funds to establish a massive scholarship program for underprivileged students. He named it the Clara Sterling Grant.
I respectfully asked him to change the name. I didn't want the name "Sterling" attached to anything good. We settled on the Phoenix Grant.
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My mother was sentenced to four years in a minimum-security federal facility. Arthur got fifteen years in a maximum-security penitentiary.
I received one letter from Julian a few months later. It was written on cheap notebook paper. He asked if I could loan him a few hundred dollars to make rent. I took a red pen, wrote "You didn't earn it" across the paper, and mailed it back to him.
