Chapter 7
Back at the Vance estate, the bright, airy solarium felt like a tomb. The guests had fled as quickly as polite society allowed, whispering furiously as they rushed to their cars. The ruined pink birthday cake remained on the floor, a sticky, pathetic monument to a catastrophic miscalculation.
Richard Vance paced furiously across the marble floor, his tie loosened, his suit jacket discarded on a nearby chair. He raked his hands through his hair, his fair skin flushed with a violent, panicked red.
"How could you not know?!" Richard screamed, turning his rage onto his mother. "She lived under this roof for five years! She wore that ring every single day! How did you not recognize the Sterling crest?!"
Olivia sat rigidly on a velvet sofa, clutching a glass of scotch. Her hands trembled, making the ice clink against the crystal. "She hid it beneath her clothes! She acted like a frightened little mouse! How was I supposed to know she was the lost heir to a billion-dollar syndicate?!"
Vanessa Cole hovered nervously near the doorway, desperately wishing she had left with the other guests. "Richard... what are we going to do? Julian Sterling isn't going to just let this go. He threatened to erase your bloodline."
"He was bluffing to secure his extraction!" Richard snapped, though the waver in his voice betrayed his terror. "He wouldn't start an all-out war over a domestic dispute!"
"You shoved the Sterling heir's face into a cake in front of fifty people, Richard!" Olivia shouted, her composure finally breaking. "That is not a domestic dispute! That is a public declaration of war against a family that outguns us ten to one!"
Richard stopped pacing, his breathing heavy. He looked at the shattered cake on the floor, the reality of his situation sinking its claws into his chest. He hadn't just lost his punching bag. He hadn't just lost his daughter. He had awoken a sleeping giant, and he was standing directly in its path.
"Call the capos," Richard ordered, his voice dropping to a desperate, urgent pitch. "Call Marcus, call Leo, call everyone. Tell them to double the guards at the ports. Lock down the warehouses. I want armed men at every entrance to this estate."
"Richard, we can't fight them," Olivia pleaded, standing up. "We need to negotiate. We need to offer a settlement. Money, territory, whatever they want."
"I am not giving them my daughter!" Richard roared, slamming his fist onto a nearby table, rattling the silverware. "Lily is a Vance! She is my property! I will not let Julian Sterling take what is mine!"
Vanessa cleared her throat nervously. "Richard... the video."
Richard whipped his head toward her, his eyes wild. "What video?"
"The video of you pushing her into the cake," Vanessa whispered, her face pale. "It auto-uploaded to my private cloud. If Julian Sterling's hackers find it... if they use it to show the other families how you treated their blood..."
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Richard’s face drained of color. He lunged across the room, grabbing Vanessa by the shoulders. "Delete it. Wipe the cloud. Destroy the phone. If that video gets out, we won't just face the Sterlings. We'll be a laughingstock, and our allies will abandon us."
As Vanessa frantically fumbled with her phone, a heavy, ominous knock echoed from the grand oak doors of the foyer. The Vances froze in the bright sunlight, the warmth of the room suddenly feeling very, very cold.
