Chapter 2 - The Only Question That Mattered
My father sat at the head table, sipping his champagne. He wasn't shocked. He wasn't reaching for a microphone to defend his eldest daughter's honor. He was watching them with the calm, calculating satisfaction of a CEO who had just successfully executed a difficult merger.
Suddenly, the architecture of the last year made perfect, hideous sense.
Blair was reckless, unmanageable, and entirely incapable of being the polished, respectable face of the Sterling empire. Vance was the brilliant, ambitious heir-apparent my father desperately needed to take over the company. But Vance didn't have the Sterling blood, and Blair couldn't provide the discipline.
So, Magnus had used me.
I was the anchor. I was the obedient, presentable wife who would give Vance the legitimate claim to the Sterling name, while Blair got to keep the man in the shadows, entirely sanctioned by our father. I wasn't a bride. I was a corporate proxy.
I stood up.
The heavy layers of silk and tulle fell around me. I stepped away from my chair, my heels clicking sharply against the polished marble floor. I didn't walk toward the dance floor. I walked directly to my father.
The whispers in the room began to die down as I approached the head table. Even the string quartet began to falter, the cello dragging out a long, discordant note before falling completely silent.
Vance and Blair stopped dancing, finally noticing the atmospheric pressure in the room dropping.
I stopped across the table from Magnus. He looked up at me, his smile fading into a look of stern warning. Sit down, Sloan, his eyes said. Play your part.
I leaned forward, resting my palms flat on the white linen tablecloth.
"Did you tell him, Father?" I asked.
My voice wasn't loud, but in the dead silence of the ballroom, it carried all the way to the crystal chandeliers.
May you like
Magnus frowned, a flicker of genuine confusion breaking through his iron facade. "Tell him what, Sloan? Sit down. You're causing a scene."
"Did you tell him," I repeated, enunciating every syllable with absolute, freezing clarity, "that according to Grandfather's original charter, the controlling majority of the Sterling Provisions trust legally transfers to the eldest daughter the moment her marriage certificate is signed?"
