Chapter 16 - The Messenger
The silence in the cottage was suffocating. The only sound was the crackle of pine logs collapsing into embers and the soft babble of baby Leo as he reached for a dropped spoon.
Claire’s eyes were wide, filled with an agonizing mixture of sorrow, anger, and revelation. "You let me hate you for three years... to protect me?"
"It was the only way you would run," Alexander whispered. "If you knew the truth, you would have stayed to fight him. And back then, my father would have crushed you without a second thought."
A heavy knock sounded on the front door, sharp and deliberate, breaking the fragile atmosphere into splinters.
Gabriel immediately drew a compact semiautomatic pistol from the back of his waistband, gesturing for Claire to move toward the adjoining room with Leo. Claire scooped her son into her arms without a word, retreating into the hallway with swift, silent grace.
Alexander stood up, motioning Gabriel to hold his fire. "Let me answer it. If it’s Marcus’s warning come to life, it’s me they want."
Alexander walked to the door and pulled it open. Standing on the snow-covered porch was not an army of process servers, but a solitary figure wrapped in an expensive cashmere coat that looked absurdly out of place against the Maine winter.
It was Victor Sterling—Julianna’s younger brother.
Victor smiled, a cold, sneering expression that Alexander knew all too well from the boardroom battles of Manhattan. "Hello, Alexander. Julianna sends her regards. She thought you might be freezing up here in the middle of nowhere."
Alexander stepped out onto the porch, pulling the door shut behind him to keep the warm interior out of Victor’s sight. "You have five seconds to turn around and get back into whatever hired car brought you here, Victor."
May you like
"Don't be so dramatic," Victor said, pulling a leather-bound folder from beneath his coat. "Father didn't send me to fight. He sent me to deliver terms. You signed over thirty percent of your voting shares to the joint trust when you left for Maine. We want the rest. Sign them over, and we forget about the little flower girl and her bastard child."
***
