"The merger is finalized," Arthur said, not looking up from his steak. "Elias, you’ll be lead counsel. It’s time you earned the office."
"I’m not here for the business," Claire said, her voice steady. "I’m here for the truth. I found Mom’s letters, Dad. The ones from 1994. The ones addressed to Julian."
Arthur’s knife scraped against the china—a sharp, violent sound. He finally looked up, his eyes like flint. "Julian was a ghost, Claire. And ghosts don't have a seat at this table." Incest Story
The air in the room curdled. Claire looked at her brother, seeing the trap he was inadvertently setting. She hadn't come home for the company. She had come home because their mother’s private journals, found in a dusty attic in Paris, suggested that Arthur wasn’t the self-made titan he claimed to be—and that Elias might not be his biological son.
The dinner table at the Sterling estate didn’t seat people; it seated grudges. "The merger is finalized," Arthur said, not looking
Arthur didn't answer. He simply took a sip of wine, the silence stretching until it became a physical weight. In that moment, the Sterling family wasn't a dynasty; they were three strangers tied together by blood, lies, and a shared history that was beginning to burn.
Elias tightened his grip on his fork. He didn’t want the office. He wanted the jazz club in the basement of a brick building downtown—the one he’d been secretly funding for three years. "Actually, Father, I think Claire should take the lead. She has the background in international law." "I’m here for the truth
Elias looked between them, the world he had spent thirty years trying to fit into suddenly feeling like a house of cards. He realized then that his father’s coldness wasn't just discipline; it was distance—the distance of a man who looked at his son and saw a rival’s face. "Is it true?" Elias whispered.