“Second: I demand that before sunrise, you call in all of Thorne’s debts. I want to see the news of the total bankruptcy and liquidation of the Thorne Group on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal.
“Third,” I swept my gaze over the two pieces of bloody garbage on the floor. “This man and this woman. If I ever see them on any street in New York again, I will not hesitate to destroy your businesses as well.”
Boom.
These three edicts meant absolute capital punishment. They didn’t just strip David of his money. They erased him from society.
“Understood, Madam! Have no doubt! That bastard will be left without the shirt on his back!” The bankers breathed a sigh of relief and turned to look at David with the eyes of hungry wolves.
“Security! What are you waiting for? Throw this trash out on the street!” a banker yelled.
The massive security guards rushed in, grabbed David and Chloe by the scruff of their necks, and began dragging them toward the exit.
“No! Kate, you can’t be this cruel! I’m Lily’s biological father! Let me see my daughter!” David thrashed in hysterics, squealing like a slaughtered pig.
“Shut him up,” I frowned in annoyance.
A guard unceremoniously drew his baton and drove it with maximum force directly into David’s solar plexus. David gasped, spat out stomach bile, and curled into a ball.
They were just about to drag them out when suddenly—
“Stop! Who dared to touch my son?!”
A shrill, hysterical screech rang out. Martha Thorne, with a bandage on her head and a still-swollen cheek, shoved her way through the crowd, bursting into the hall like a rabid dog protecting its pup. Lacking VIP status, she had been waiting in the driver’s lounge, but hearing the commotion, she ran over.
Seeing her adored son being dragged across the floor while I stood in the center surrounded by billionaires, her tiny brain finally short-circuited.
“Kate, you cursed witch! You bringer of bad luck!” Martha flopped her behind onto the marble floor and threw a classic temper tantrum, rolling on the ground. “Good people, look at this! This snake cheated on my son, and now she and her thug friends are wiping us out! Where is the justice?!”
Rolling on the floor, Martha suddenly caught sight of Lily being held by Richard Sterling. A light flashed in her greedy eyes. She leaped up and charged at the billionaire with a manic expression.
“That’s Thorne blood! That’s my biological granddaughter! You old geezer, give me Lily! Half the Sterling fortune is legally ours!”
She didn’t even get within ten feet of my father.
Arthur snorted coldly, made a sharp lunge, and planted his heavy Oxford shoe squarely into Martha’s chest. Like a kite with a snapped string, she flew backward and crashed directly into a long table holding a massive pyramid of champagne flutes.
Crash. Shatter.
Hundreds of crystal glasses exploded into dust. Elite vintage champagne cascaded down over her head like a waterfall. Shards of glass sliced her skin, mixing blood with alcohol, turning her into a pathetic, soaked scarecrow.
I slowly walked over to her, looking down at the mother-in-law who had tortured me for years, now choking on her own blood. The old woman scrambled backward in terror.
“Mother-in-law,” I smirked. From my limited-edition clutch, I pulled out a folder and whipped it violently across Martha’s fat face. “Wipe your dog eyes and read. This is the prenuptial agreement and the absolute waiver of parental rights signed personally by your son. From the second he put pen to paper, Lily’s last name became Sterling. You have absolutely nothing to do with her.”
I leaned down slightly, delivering an icy whisper. “You used to say I brought bad luck. Congratulations. You guessed right. Now take your bankrupt son and crawl back into your sewer.”
I stood up straight, brushing off my hands. “Throw them out.”
Martha Thorne was scooped up by the armpits like a bag of rotting garbage. Along with the half-dead David and the mutilated Chloe, they were disgracefully hurled out the doors of the Grand Aster Hotel, straight into the freezing New York night.
Silence fell over the hall once again. Only this time, woven into the silence was the primal fear of the young empress of capital. The corporate sharks understood clearly: after tonight, the balance of power in America had changed forever.
“Kate, darling,” Richard Sterling, rocking a sleeping Lily, walked up to me, immense pride radiating from his face. “We’ve swatted the flies. It’s time to get down to business.”
I turned around. The ice on my face melted into a dazzling smile. I walked up to my father, gently wiped a tear stain from Lily’s cheek, and turned back to the crowd of oligarchs frozen in awe.
I slowly raised a glass of champagne, assuming the posture of a true queen at her coronation.
“Gentlemen,” my clear, power-filled voice echoed under the dome. “Welcome to my gala.”
Chapter 5: Checkmate
After that night, the world of high finance was turned upside down.
Lily and I moved into the most luxurious private estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, surrounded by woods and the Long Island Sound. Lily got her own private amusement park, a stable with ponies, twelve round-the-clock nannies, and the best tutors money could buy. The little girl who had been terrified to ask for an ice cream cone became the most revered princess of the East Coast.
But I didn’t drown in the sweetness of revenge. My mind remained ice cold. Revenge was just the appetizer; the future was the main course.
The day after the dinner, I called a press conference that shook the global markets. For fifteen minutes, standing at the podium, I clearly and ruthlessly laid out the Sterling Holdings conglomerate strategy for the next three years. Hostile takeovers, aggressive expansions. The business sharks in the room wiped cold sweat from their brows, realizing I hadn’t dulled my claws on kitchen pots and pans. I had accumulated monstrous power in the shadows.
At the end of the conference, a reporter asked, “Miss Sterling, what can you say about the current situation of your ex-husband, David Thorne, and his company?”
I looked directly into the camera lens and slightly curved my lips. “David Thorne? I’m sorry, I don’t recall such a person.”
The press room gasped. It was the ultimate humiliation. Complete, absolute erasure.
Meanwhile, David was surviving on the very edge of New Jersey, in the rotting slums of an abandoned industrial park. Freezing autumn rain covered the zone in a black shroud. The windowless basement smelled of death.
Bang!
A rusted iron door was kicked off its hinges. A massive thug nicknamed Tommy the Hammer stepped forward, holding a piece of rebar.
A dark lump huddled in the corner convulsed violently and raised its head. It was David. His hair was matted with dirt, his torn shirt soaked in stench.
“Tommy… give me two more days,” David crawled across the wet concrete like a worm, his voice rasping. “My old partners… I’ll pay back the five million.”
“Lend it to you? Yeah, right,” Tommy swung his boot hard into David’s chest. The sickening crunch of breaking ribs echoed in the basement. David flew back, slamming against a wall. Bloody foam erupted from his lips. “Your company was chopped up and sold for scraps weeks ago. You crossed the Sterlings. Not a single dog will give you a dime.”
Tommy pulled out a sharp hunting knife. “Today is the deadline. We’ll cut out a kidney, pop out a cornea… ought to cover a couple mill in interest.”
At that moment, two other thugs dragged a screeching woman into the basement and threw her onto the floor. Chloe. Her face, ruined beyond repair, looked like a Halloween mask.
“Davey… save me,” she wheezed.
“You piece of trash!” David lunged up like a rabid dog, pointing a shaking finger at her. “She’s the one who took the loan! Cut out her kidneys! Sell her for organs! Just let me go!”
Suddenly, a hysterical wail came from a filthy mattress in the corner. Martha Thorne, disheveled and covered in grime, crawled out. Seeing the knife over her son, she grabbed a cracked plate and threw it at Tommy. “Don’t touch my Davey!”
One of the mobsters swatted her away in annoyance, shoving her hard. The old woman slipped. She fell backward, and the back of her head hit the sharp edge of a concrete step with a sickening crack. Martha’s body twitched, and a dark puddle rapidly spread across the concrete. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She was dead before her eyes glazed over.
“Mom!” David screamed, but the blade at his throat forced him to freeze.
“Tch. A dead body complicates things. Grab the bitch,” Tommy nodded at Chloe. She was dragged out the door like a slab of meat, destined for international waters.
David was left alone in the abyss of despair, looking at his mother’s body. Listening to the rain, he lost the last drops of his humanity. In his mind’s eye, he saw my gaze—the gaze of a deity looking at an insect.
If I’m going down, we’re going to die together, his fractured mind reasoned.
Digging through the trash, he found a tabloid newspaper with a paparazzi photo of Lily and me outside an elite Upper East Side pediatric clinic, detailing her rehabilitation schedule. With his last few coins, David bought a meat cleaver at a bodega and hotwired an old delivery van.
On a rainy afternoon, he laid in wait outside the clinic. His bloodshot eyes never left the doors, betting everything on a mother’s fanatical love.
There they were. A uniformed nanny walked out, pushing a closed, high-end stroller covered by a thick black rain-shield.
David flew out of the van like a charging bull. He tackled the nanny into the mud, ripped the blanket-wrapped bundle out of the stroller, threw it into the back of the van, and slammed on the gas.
“Kate! I found your weakness!” he screamed in the cab, flying onto the FDR drive. Steering with one hand, he dialed my number.
“Yes?” My voice was horrifyingly calm.
“Recognize me?” David rasped, trying to hide his terror. “I have your brat. Prepare fifty million to an offshore account and a helicopter at the abandoned lots in the Bronx right now, or you will never see this bastard again!”
Silence on the line. David felt a rush of euphoria. He had stepped on my neck again.
“Fifty million, David? Is your life really worth that much?” A mocking tone bled into my voice. “Before you negotiate, maybe you should look at what you actually stole.”
Cold sweat broke out across David’s body. A terrible premonition crawled down his spine. He slammed on the brakes. The bundle on the passenger seat tumbled over. With shaking hands, he ripped the blanket away.
No crying. No breathing.
Laying on the seat was a hyper-realistic, life-sized silicone medical mannequin. And in the center of the dummy’s chest blinked a red LED light, emitting a soft beep.
“As a father, you couldn’t even remember the weight of your own biological child,” my icy voice sliced through the silence, coming directly from a speaker embedded inside the doll. “Inside that mannequin is a military-grade GPS beacon. From the second you grabbed it, your location and this extortion call have been live-streamed directly to the FBI field office in Manhattan.”
