Chapter 6 - The Desperate Plea
The fallout was catastrophic for the Sterling family. Within forty-eight hours of my press conference, Sterling Holdings’ stock plummeted by seventy-eight percent. Institutional lenders panicked, calling in their debts immediately, and the federal government launched a full-scale criminal probe into Arthur Sterling’s business practices. The high-society circles in Dallas and Austin that once treated Vanessa like royalty suddenly locked their doors, refusing to take her calls.
I was sitting in my home study reviewing quarterly tech projections when the front gate intercom buzzed insistently.
"Miss Cross," the security guard’s voice crackled through the speaker. "There’s a visitor at the gate. It’s... Miss Vanessa Sterling. She’s refusing to leave, and she’s causing a scene."
I didn't even look up from my tablet. "Escort her off the property immediately, or call the local police for trespassing."
"Wait! Please, Adrienne! Just five minutes!" Vanessa’s voice suddenly screamed over the intercom speaker, high-pitched, desperate, and cracking with hysteria. "I know you can hear me! Please, you have to listen to me! My father is having a heart attack, our accounts are locked, we have nothing left! Please, Adrienne, have mercy!"
Sighing, I closed my tablet, stood up, and walked slowly toward the grand iron front gates.
When I reached the entrance, Vanessa looked like a ghost of her former self. Her designer hair was tangled and unwashed, her makeup was smeared from crying, and her expensive cashmere coat was wrinkled and stained. She clung to the iron bars of the gate like a drowning sailor gripping a sinking spar.
"Adrienne... thank God," she sobbed, pressing her face against the cold metal. "Please drop the lawsuits. Call off your lawyers. My father is going to prison, our home is being repossessed by the bank. If you do this, we’ll be ruined forever. We were going to be married!"
I stopped a few feet away, looking at her with cold, clinical detachment. "We were never going to be married, Vanessa. You were planning my corporate execution while sleeping in my bed."
"It was my father's idea!" she shrieked, instantly throwing her own family under the bus in her blind panic. "He forced me to do it! He said we needed your liquidity to save our real estate portfolio! I never wanted to hurt your mother, Adrienne, I swear to God!"
"Really?" I raised an eyebrow, crossing my arms. "Is that why you threw boiling hot soup at a seventy-one-year-old woman recovering from open-heart surgery? Is that why you blamed Grace and threatened a twelve-year-old child?"
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Vanessa’s face twisted in desperate horror as she realized her lies were completely transparent. She dropped to her knees on the pavement outside the gates, sobbing openly. "Please, Adrienne... I'll do anything. I'll crawl through the dirt. Just don't destroy us."
"You should have thought about that before you picked up that bowl," I said flatly. I turned around on my heel, signaling the guards to secure the gates, and walked back toward my home without looking back once.
