Chapter 6: Victoria Fights Back
The message sat on the table between them all the way home.
Maya didn't ask Edward to respond to it.
He didn't.
The phone went dark and stayed dark, and they rode in silence through the city with the baby strapped between them in the back seat, and neither of them said what they were both thinking.
Victoria Sterling did not lose gracefully.
She never had.
They were home for less than an hour when the first call came.
Not to Edward's phone.
To Maya's.
She didn't recognize the number but she answered it.
"Miss Hargrove." The voice was male, professional, careful.
"My name is Gerald Fitch.
I represent Victoria Sterling in a personal capacity.
I'd like to discuss a matter of mutual benefit before things proceed any further."
Maya looked at Edward across the kitchen.
"Go ahead," she said.
"Mrs.
Sterling is prepared to offer a private settlement.
A significant one.
In exchange for a signed agreement not to pursue the estate claim and not to cooperate with any Department of Defense inquiry into the trust management." A pause.
"She is also prepared to issue a formal private apology for the events of this evening."
"Private," Maya said.
"Yes.
Private.
Naturally, given the sensitivities—"
"The apology she's offering," Maya said.
"Would it happen in the same room where she sl@pped me in front of four hundred people?"
Silence.
"I'll take that as a no," Maya said.
"Tell Mrs.
Sterling I'm not interested."
"Miss Hargrove, I'd encourage you to consider the offer carefully.
Legal proceedings of this nature can take years.
They can be exhausting.
They can be—"
"Mr.
Fitch." She kept her voice level.
"Your client committed fraud against a government trust for nine years to keep me from inheriting what my father left me.
She knew who I was when her son married me.
She let me live in that house for three years believing I was nothing." She paused.
"A private settlement and a private apology are not what I'm looking for."
"Then what are you looking for?"
"The truth," she said.
"In the same room where she told her lies."
She ended the call.
Edward was watching her from across the kitchen.
"She offered money," he said.
"Yes."
"You said no."
"Yes."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then: "She'll come at us harder now."
"I know."
"She has attorneys, Maya.
Connections.
She knows people in the Department who owe her favors.
She's been managing that trust for nine years and she knows exactly where every document is buried." He wasn't trying to frighten her.
He was being honest with her, which was new, and she recognized it as such.
"This won't be quick."
"I know that too."
"So why—"
"Because she sl@pped me," Maya said.
"In front of my child.
In front of four hundred people.
While you stood there." She said it without cruelty.
Just fact.
"And she did it because she believed I had no one.
No name.
No history.
No one who would ever stand up and say I mattered." She looked at him.
"She was wrong.
And I want her to know she was wrong in exactly the same way she told me I was nothing."
Edward didn't argue.
He picked up his own phone and dialed.
"Who are you calling?" Maya asked.
"Vance," he said.
"And then I'm calling our family's outside counsel.
Not the firm.
Someone my mother has never met." He met her eyes.
"I told you that's where you start.
This is the next part."
The call connected.
They worked through the night.
By morning, three things had happened.
Vance had formally notified the Department of Defense that a surviving Hargrove heir had been identified and was prepared to cooperate with a full estate review.
The Department's legal division had opened a preliminary inquiry into the trust management.
And Victoria Sterling's personal attorney — not Gerald Fitch, her other attorney, the one she kept for situations exactly like this — had filed an emergency injunction attempting to delay the DNA verification process on the grounds that the identification was speculative and potentially fraudulent.
Maya read the injunction filing over her morning coffee.
She set it down on the kitchen table.
"She's calling me a fraud," she said.
"Yes," Edward said.
"She sl@pped me, called me worthless, and now she's filing papers saying I'm lying about who I am."
"Yes."
Maya looked at the medal on the table.
She had brought it home from the ballroom in her coat pocket.
It sat now beside her coffee cup, worn and silver and very old.
"Call Vance back," she said.
"Tell him I'm ready for the DNA test.
Today.
As fast as they can schedule it."
Edward picked up his phone.
From the other room, the baby started to cry.
Maya went to her daughter, lifted her, held her close.
"I know," she said softly.
May you like
"I know."
But she was smiling.
