Chapter 9 - The Unraveling of North Hills
While Arthur Sterling sat at my kitchen table confessing a thirty-year-old debt, across town in North Hills, the house on Elmwood Drive was tearing itself apart at the seams.
Ethan stood in the center of the pristine white living room, watching Brooke aggressively fold a silk blouse and toss it into an oversized Louis Vuitton suitcase.
“Brooke, stop it,” Ethan said, his voice echoing off the vaulted white ceilings. “Stop packing. Where are you even going to go?”
“To my sister’s in Charlotte!” Brooke shouted back, her face flushed, her mascara slightly smudged from hours of frantic crying. “Are you completely blind, Ethan? My parents refuse to take my calls. Vance has already reassigned your project to Harrison. And half the people who were at our dinner party have deleted us off social media! We are a laughingstock!”
“Because you threw a tantrum over a pot roast!” Ethan yelled, stepping toward her. For the first time in their five-year marriage, my son didn't shrink back. He didn't smooth down his shirt or try to mediate. He looked at his wife with a cold, clear fury. “You told my mother—the woman who fed two hundred children a day for thirty years and raised me by herself after my dad died—that her cooking ‘didn't fit your theme’!”
Brooke froze, the silk blouse dangling from her trembling fingers. She turned to face him, her eyes wide with disbelief.
“It was a white-themed Christmas Eve party, Ethan! Everyone had on designer clothes! You saw the table! You agreed with me beforehand!”
“I agreed with you because I was a coward!” Ethan roared, his voice cracking with emotion. “I spent five years trying to climb into a social bracket that I didn't belong in, marrying a woman who cared more about how things looked on Instagram than how they felt in real life! I traded my family, my mother’s love, and my own self-respect for a white tablecloth and a pat on the back from men who would throw me under the bus the second my stock dropped!”
Brooke dropped the blouse. She stared at her husband as if he had just turned into a stranger.
“You’re blaming me,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “You’re sitting here blaming me for everything.”
“I’m blaming both of us,” Ethan said, running a hand through his uncombed hair. “Mainly myself, for letting it get this far. But you’re not packing your bags because of the dinner party, Brooke. You’re packing your bags because you can't stand the thought of not being the queen of a fake kingdom anymore.”
She opened her mouth to scream at him, to hurl a glass, to slam a door, but the front doorbell rang.
It wasn't a polite ring. It was a rapid, furious barrage of chimes.
Brooke spun around, wiping frantically under her eyes. “Who on earth could that be? Did you invite reporters here?”
Ethan didn't answer. He walked past her down the hallway, pulled open the front door, and stopped dead in his tracks.
Standing on the porch was Harrison—Ethan’s primary rival at Sterling Logistics—flanked by two corporate compliance officers holding heavy leather briefcases.
“Ethan Miller,” Harrison said with a sharp, venomous smile, holding up a manila folder. “I’m afraid corporate compliance has a few questions regarding the architectural blueprints for the Raleigh-Durham expansion project. Specifically... why your father’s workshop logo is stamped on the structural load-bearing calculations.”
Ethan stared at him, the blood draining entirely from his face. “What are you talking about?”
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“I’m talking about corporate espionage,” Harrison said smoothly, stepping past Ethan uninvited into the white foyer. “Using proprietary, unregistered designs belonging to a third-party contractor without disclosure. Mr. Sterling’s office has just authorized a full internal audit. And as of twenty minutes ago, Ethan... you’re not just off the project. You’re being investigated for fraud.”
***
