Chapter 15 - The Office on the Fortieth Floor
The downtown office of Vance, Sterling & Cole occupied the entire fortieth floor of the sleekest glass-and-steel monolith in the financial district. From the floor-to-ceiling windows of the private conference room, the city looked like an intricate model of glass and concrete, completely detached from the messy, bleeding reality of human lives below.
Hannah walked out of the elevator wearing the charcoal wool coat Frank had insisted she borrow—it was a bit oversized on her shoulders, but it gave her a sharp, austere silhouette—and pushed through the heavy mahogany double doors.
Marcus Vance was not alone.
Seated at the far end of the ten-seater ebony conference table was Ryan. He looked terrible. His expensive Brioni suit was rumpled, the silk tie slightly askew, and the dark circles under his eyes spoke of a man who hadn't slept a wink since Christmas Eve. Next to him sat a junior associate carrying a stack of leather-bound files thick enough to stop a bullet.
Marcus stood up, smoothing his Savile Row lapels with a practiced, patrician air. "Hannah. Thank you for making the time. Please, sit."
Hannah didn't sit immediately. She walked to the empty chair directly opposite Ryan, pulled it out with deliberate slowness, and seated herself with absolute, unhurried grace. She crossed her legs at the ankle, rested her hands flat on the table, and looked straight into Marcus’s silver-rimmed glasses without blinking.
"Let’s skip the pleasantries, Marcus," Hannah said, her voice carrying a crisp, bell-like clarity that echoed slightly in the massive room. "You didn't ask me here to catch up on the holidays. What does Judith want?"
Ryan flinched at the sound of his mother’s name, half-raising a hand as if to intervene. "Hannah, please. Can we just talk? Just the two of us? Without all the legal posturing?"
"You had your chance to talk, Ryan," Hannah said, not even turning her head to look at him. "When your mother struck me across the face in my own dining room, you told me to be the bigger person and ‘calm everyone down.’ When she threw our daughter out into the snow, you stood by the dry bar and watched. There is nothing left for just the two of us to discuss."
Marcus cleared his throat, a dry, papery sound designed to reassert control over the room. "Mrs. Sterling—or should I say, Ms. Parker, pending the formal filings—let’s not be overly dramatic. We are dealing with significant capital here. The Sterling family trust is valued in the tens of millions. As you are well aware, the prenuptial agreement you signed seven years ago heavily favors the bloodline in the event of a dissolution."
He slid a single piece of thick parchment across the table. It stopped an inch from Hannah’s fingertips.
"Judith is prepared to offer you a settlement," Marcus continued, his tone dripping with patronizing benevolence. "A lump sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, paid over twenty-four months, on the strict condition that you execute a full, permanent non-disclosure agreement regarding the Sterling family holdings, relinquish any future claims to Ellie’s custodial trust, and relocate outside of this state permanently."
Silence descended upon the room, heavy and suffocating.
Ryan finally found his voice, a ragged whisper that cracked in the middle. "Hannah... please sign it. My mother... she’s relentless. If you fight her, she’ll drag this through the courts for five years. She’ll freeze every asset. You won't have a penny left. This way... you get a fresh start. We can... we can figure something out later, behind the scenes—"
Hannah looked down at the paper. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars. To Judith Sterling, that was the equivalent of a weekend in Aspen or a moderate tip to an art dealer. To the old Hannah—the girl who had worked three jobs through college just to pay off her mother’s medical debt—it would have seemed like an astronomical fortune.
Slowly, Hannah looked up from the paper and fixed her gaze directly on her husband.
"You really are pathetic, Ryan," she whispered, her voice devoid of anger, carrying only a profound, freezing contempt. "You honestly believe everyone is as weak as you are."
She reached out, picked up the paper between her thumb and forefinger, and without a single tremor in her hand, she tore it cleanly down the middle. Then into quarters. Then into tiny, fluttering confetti that she let snow down onto the polished ebony table.
May you like
"Tell Judith," Hannah said, standing up so sharply her chair scraped loudly against the floor, "that her accountant is going to need a much larger calculator very soon. Because I’m not asking for a settlement anymore. I’m asking for everything."
***
