Chapter 13 - The Mother’s Ultimatum
The rain in Evanston was gray and relentless, beating down upon the iron gates of Eleanor Sterling’s ancestral home.
Unlike Daniel, Eleanor had kept her brick mansion on Forest Avenue, protected by pre-marital covenants dating back to the late 1960s.
Yet her pride was bleeding profusely.
At the garden club, women who had once courted her patronage now whispered behind linen napkins whenever she walked into the drawing room.
Her son’s public disgrace was a permanent stain on the family silver.
She stood before the marble fireplace, holding an unsealed court subpoena in her manicured hand.
The door of the library opened, and Daniel walked in, shaking the rain from his cheap umbrella.
"Don't put that wet nylon on the parquetry, Daniel," Eleanor snapped without turning around.
Daniel set the umbrella by the brass bucket and slumped into one of the wingback chairs.
"Mother, Pendelton signed the litigation funding agreement," Daniel said, his voice brimming with a desperate, frantic energy.
"We’re filing the challenge on Monday."
Eleanor turned slowly, her aristocratic face carved with disgust.
"You look like a bankrupt clerk, Daniel."
"I am doing this for the Sterling name," he protested, leaning forward.
"Claire took forty million dollars out of our sphere and left me sorting shipping manifests in a suburban basement!"
"Claire didn't take your name," Eleanor said in a cold, measured whip of a tone.
"You gave it to that little banking strumpet on the fourth floor of a boutique hotel."
"You were careless, arrogant, and worst of all, you underestimated a woman who spent ten years keeping your books balanced."
Daniel stood up, his jaw clenched, color finally returning to his sallow cheeks.
"Are you siding with her?"
"I don't side with ghosts, Daniel," Eleanor said, tossing the subpoena onto the mahogany desk between them.
"Claire called me yesterday."
Daniel went completely rigid.
"Claire called you?"
"She did," Eleanor said quietly.
"She didn't ask for mercy, and she didn't threaten you."
"She told me that if you allow Arthur Pendelton to file that petition, she will release the 2018 estate tax addendums your father signed before his death."
Daniel’s breath caught in his throat.
"Father’s offshore declarations?"
"Your father was not an angel, Daniel, and Claire was the one who prepared his final tax portfolio before he passed away."
Eleanor walked toward her son until she was inches away, her gaze unyielding as stone.
May you like
"If those papers reach the Department of Justice, this house goes to federal auction."
"You will drop this crusade, Daniel, or I will publicly disown you before Pendelton can even file his brief."
