Chapter 3 - The Ghost of the Sterling Estate
The private VIP recovery suite on the fourth floor of Cedar Rapids General Hospital was locked down tighter than a federal penitentiary. Vance had stationed two armed security operatives outside the door, and Dr. Sarah Vance had personally reviewed the electronic access logs to ensure no one—hospital staff or family—could approach Vivienne without authorization.
Inside the room, the steady, rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor was the only sound cutting through the dim quiet.
Vivienne lay propped up against white pillows, her skin still pale, but her dark eyes—clearsighted, intelligent, and filled with a quiet, steely resolve—were wide open. She held a cup of warm water in her hands, her fingers trembling only slightly as she took a slow sip.
I sat beside the bed, holding her other hand, my thumb tracing her knuckles. I hadn't let go of her since we brought her upstairs.
“You should have told me, Viv,” I murmured, my voice thick with a mixture of profound relief and simmering fury. “About Maeve. About the land deeds. About what my father did.”
Vivienne looked at me, a sad, bittersweet smile touching her lips. “I only found out the full truth three weeks ago, Conrad. I wanted to gather all the certified legal documentation before I brought it to you. I knew what it would mean for the company... for our family name. I didn't want to shatter your entire world without absolute proof.”
“And instead, they tried to shatter you,” I said, my jaw clenching so hard my teeth ached. “Brenda, Mason, and my mother. They knew?”
“They didn't just know,” Vivienne whispered, her voice dropping into a register of cold, unyielding anger. “Brenda was the one who managed the corporate archives. When I accessed the restricted vault in the basement of our headquarters to verify the Sterling land grants, Brenda caught me. She didn't scream. She didn't threaten me. She just smiled, poured me a cup of tea, and told me that the Pendelton family didn't share their empire with bastards or charity cases.”
The door to the recovery room clicked open.
Vance stepped inside, closing it securely behind him. He held a heavy leather briefcase and a printed stack of financial transaction logs.
“Mr. Pendelton, Mrs. Pendelton,” Vance said, nodding respectfully. “We’ve secured Brenda’s downtown office and her suburban residence. The local police are currently executing search warrants based on the forensic evidence we provided from the graveyard.”
“Did they catch Brenda?” I asked sharply.
“Not yet,” Vance replied, setting the briefcase on the bedside table and flipping it open. “She tried to catch a private charter flight out of the municipal airstrip to the Cayman Islands. Her accounts show a series of rapid wire transfers totaling four point two million dollars siphoned from the corporate acquisition fund over the past six months. But our team managed to ground her flight before takeoff. She’s currently cornered in the private hangar.”
I stood up, buttoning the top button of my dress shirt. “Let’s go pay our purchasing director a visit.”
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“Conrad, be careful,” Vivienne warned, her hand reaching out to catch my wrist. “Brenda isn't acting alone. She has backers on the board—people who knew about your father’s original fraud and have been covering it up for decades.”
“Let them back her,” I said, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “Because today, the Pendelton empire is getting audited from the ground up.”
