Chapter 6 - THE CRACK IN THE MARBLE
Scarlett had not attended a Sterling family function in twelve years.
She wore a gown of midnight-black velvet, cut with an austere elegance that belonged to the 1950s. Around her neck was a triple strand of matched Charleston pearls that had belonged to her grandmother, Eleanor Mae Vance. Her silver hair was piled high, and her hearing aid was conspicuously absent, replaced by a pair of heavy pearl ear clips.
Behind her, carrying an oversized leather briefcase, walked Nora Vance.
The silence in Hibernian Hall was so total that the hum of the air conditioning sounded like a jet engine.
Trip’s hand hovered two inches above the gold pen. His face didn't break, but his jaw muscles bunched, two hard knots appearing beneath his tanned skin.
"Scarlett," he said into the microphone, his tone carrying that sharp, patronizing edge of a brother addressing an annoying child. "How lovely of you to join us. The family table is over on the terrace. Preston, please escort your aunt to a seat."
Preston didn't move.
Trip’s eyes narrowed, flashing with sudden, dangerous anger. "Preston. I gave you an instruction."
Preston took a half-step forward, his old conditioning pulling at his limbs like puppet strings.
I reached out and caught his wrist.
My fingers were warm, steady, and unyielding. Preston stopped. He looked down at my hand, then up at my face. I didn't say a word. I just looked at him, reminding him of Dany sitting on the backseat of our car, holding an empty purple dragon while her brother held seventy-one thousand dollars.
Preston’s jaw set. He stepped back, remaining firmly at my side.
Trip’s knuckles turned white on the edge of the podium.
"Trip," Scarlett said, her cane clicking rhythmically against the heart-pine floorboards as she walked slowly down the center aisle. The crowd parted before her like the Red Sea before Moses. "I didn't come for the crab soup, darling. And I certainly didn't come to sit on the terrace."
She reached the base of the podium steps, stopping ten feet from her brother.
"I came," Scarlett said, her voice clear and resonant, "to save you from committing perjury in front of the entire bar association of the State of South Carolina."
A collective gasp rippled through the ballroom. Judge Thomas Ravenel, sitting in the front row, adjusted his glasses and leaned forward.
"Scarlett," Trip whispered, his voice dropping into the microphone, hard and low. "You have had too much sherry. Arthur, call security."
"Don't bother, Arthur," Nora Vance spoke up, stepping forward into the light of the chandelier. She opened her briefcase with two loud, metallic snaps. "Security will find themselves named as co-defendants in an obstruction of chancery proceeding if they lay a hand on my client."
Arthur Vance looked at his daughter, his mouth opening and closing like a fish on a dock. "Nora? What... what madness is this?"
"It’s not madness, Father," Nora said, her voice cutting through the room like a scalpel. "It’s a Notice of Automatic Fee-Tail Reversion under the Eleanor Mae Vance Trust of 1932."
Trip let out a short, bark of laughter, though his eyes were darting rapidly across the faces in the front row. "The 1932 trust? That was extinguished fifty-two years ago during the probate of my father’s estate! Scarlett signed the dispersal agreement in 1974! She has no standing!"
"The 1974 dispersal agreement," Nora said, pulling three copies of a document stamped with bright red county seals from her briefcase, "was executed under fraudulent concealment of a non-delegable reversionary clause."
Nora walked up the three steps of the podium, placed the documents directly on top of Trip’s open leather covenant, and looked him dead in the eye.
"You knew, Mr. Sterling. You and my father knew that under Paragraph 14 of the 1932 charter, Wharf Parcels 4 through 9 could never be subordinated to an unequal male-line succession vehicle. The moment you drafted this covenant—the moment you attempted to freeze Daenerys Mae Sterling out of her maternal birthright—the reversionary clause triggered automatically."
A murmur of shock broke out among the guests. Several prominent attorneys in the room were already whispering frantically to one another.
"That's absurd!" Trip snarled, his composure finally beginning to shred. He grabbed the documents Nora had placed on the podium and threw them onto the floor. "I built this company! I own those wharves!"
"You don't own them, Trip," Scarlett said softly from the floor below him. "You never did. You merely leased them from our grandmother. And as of four-fifteen this afternoon, the Charleston County Register of Deeds recorded the full transfer of title for Wharf Parcels 4 through 9 to me."
Scarlett took a step closer, resting both hands on the silver swan handle of her cane.
May you like
"You have no terminal, brother. You have no collateral for your five commercial loans with First Carolina. And unless you want the Sheriff’s Department serving an eviction notice on your port tenants on Monday morning, you are going to step away from that podium, turn off that microphone, and sit down."
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