Chapter 3 - The Hubris of Richard Sterling
For the next five days, I remained perfectly insulated in the penthouse. I was surrounded by a team of elite chefs, prenatal massage therapists, and a mother who looked at me as if I were the sun itself.
Richard, entirely intoxicated by his own arrogance and completely misjudging the reality of the situation, thought he was still in control. He assumed Eleanor was simply a wealthy, eccentric woman who was temporarily humoring a delusion. He believed that because he controlled the marital assets, my medical insurance, and my credit cards, I would eventually be forced to crawl back to him.
He didn't just wait for me to surrender; he decided to turn the knife.
According to Eleanor’s corporate intelligence team, Richard officially filed for divorce on Tuesday morning. He submitted an emergency petition for sole custody of my unborn child, utilizing the exact narrative he had spent months planting among our social circle. He claimed I was mentally unstable, suffering from severe pregnancy-induced psychosis, and that I had "abandoned" the marital home to hide in a hotel under the delusion that I was a billionaire’s missing child.
He even demanded spousal support and the forfeiture of the meager savings account I had maintained before our marriage.
When Eleanor’s lead litigator, Arthur Vance, read the petition to us in the penthouse sitting room, I didn't cry. The frightened, isolated woman Richard had systematically abused was completely dead. I sat in a silk robe, resting my hands on my swollen stomach, and felt nothing but a cold, absolute clarity.
“He thinks he can use my son as a hostage to force a settlement,” I said, looking at my mother.
“He is a parasite,” Eleanor agreed smoothly, sipping her tea. She turned to Arthur. “Where does Richard’s wealth actually come from, Arthur? I want the anatomy of his firm.”
Arthur smiled—a razor-sharp, lethal expression. “Richard is a senior partner at Sterling & Vanguard Holdings. It’s a commercial real estate acquisitions firm. They are heavily leveraged. In fact, their primary operational capital is currently tied up in a massive, three-hundred-million-dollar development project in the West Loop.”
“And who holds the primary debt on that project?” Eleanor asked.
May you like
“First Chicago Trust,” Arthur replied.
Eleanor set her teacup down with a delicate clink. “I own a forty-percent controlling stake in First Chicago Trust. Buy the rest of the debt by morning. Call the loans due immediately. Then, tell Richard’s managing partners that if they do not terminate him for cause by noon, Crawford Hospitality will permanently blacklist their firm from every commercial development in the Midwest.”
