Chapter 10 - The Rebirth
A year after the wedding that never was, I stood in a different room, looking into a different mirror.
This time, it wasn't a bridal suite. It was the corner office of a high-rise building in downtown Manhattan. The glass door behind me read: Elena Hayes - Financial Fraud Investigations & Consulting.
Thanks to the massive whistleblower reward provided by the SEC—a percentage of the hundreds of millions recovered from the Sterling accounts—I had more money than the Sterlings ever did. But instead of buying yachts or country club memberships, I opened a firm dedicated to hunting down people exactly like them.
Chloe walked into the office, carrying two cups of coffee and a thick file folder. She was my lead researcher now, and she was terrifyingly good at it.
"We just got a bite on that tech CEO in Silicon Valley," she said, dropping the file on my desk with a satisfying thud. "Looks like he's cooking the books exactly like Julian did."
I turned away from the window, the morning sun catching the edge of my desk.
"Let's tear him apart," I said.
May you like
I walked over, opened the file, and smiled. I had walked down the aisle covered in garbage to prove a point. Now, my hands were perfectly clean, and I was holding all the cards. I wasn't just a survivor of the Sterling family's malice.
I was their permanent replacement. And I knew exactly who I was.
