Chapter 3: Thirty-Four Weeks and Counting
The ambulance doors closed and the noise from Sterling Ridge disappeared behind them.
One paramedic worked beside me.
Young.
Calm hands.
He didn't ask questions about what was happening outside.
He only asked about the contractions.
"How far apart now?"
"Three minutes.
Maybe less."
"Any pain beyond the contractions?"
"No."
He checked my blood pressure.
Wrote something down.
The other paramedic drove.
I still had Diana in my ear.
"Audrey, I need you to focus on the baby right now.
Everything else is handled."
"Tell me about the accounts first."
"That can wait."
"Diana."
A pause.
"Three years before you met him," she said carefully, "Julian incorporated four shell companies in Delaware.
Two more in Nevada.
He was twenty-six.
His mother co-signed the initial filings, but Julian was listed as sole operating officer on every one."
I stared at the ambulance ceiling.
"He told me he didn't understand the financial side of the estate."
"He built the financial side of the estate."
The contraction that came next was the worst one yet.
I pressed my hand flat against my stomach and breathed until it passed.
"The transfers we found," I said when I could speak again.
"The payroll accounts.
The phantom vendors."
"All routed through those six companies."
"For how long?"
Diana hesitated.
"The earliest transaction we've confirmed is eleven years ago."
Eleven years.
Julian would have been twenty-three.
"He was doing this before Eleanor," I said.
"Before Seraphina's involvement."
"Yes."
"They didn't pull him in.
He built it and brought them in."
"That's what the records suggest."
I closed my eyes.
The image that came was not Julian at the altar.
It was Julian at our kitchen table two months into the investigation, watching me open my laptop, asking what I was working on.
Smiling when I said a routine audit.
Refilling my coffee.
Kissing the top of my head.
"Audrey." Diana's voice sharpened.
"Stay with me."
"I'm here."
"The paramedic needs you focused."
"I know."
"The baby comes first.
Everything else is already in motion."
I turned my head toward the small ambulance window.
The vineyard was gone.
We were on the highway now, moving fast, the lights of the city beginning to gather in the distance.
"Diana."
"Yes?"
"The name.
You said there was a name I wouldn't expect."
She went quiet for a moment.
"Not over the phone."
"Tell me."
"Audrey—"
"I am lying in an ambulance in premature labor because of these people.
Tell me."
Another silence.
Longer this time.
"The accounts weren't just used for the estate," Diana said.
"Some of the money moved outward.
To a personal account.
Not Julian's.
Not Eleanor's."
"Whose?"
"We'll talk when you're stable."
"Diana."
"His name is Thomas Whitfield."
The name landed like a stone dropped in still water.
Thomas Whitfield was Julian's godfather.
His father's oldest friend.
The man who had delivered a toast at our wedding about integrity and family legacy and the kind of man Robert Sterling had raised his son to be.
He had hugged me afterward.
Told me I was exactly what Julian needed.
"How much?" I asked.
"Over four years.
Approximately two point three million."
The paramedic glanced at me.
My face must have changed.
"Ma'am, I need you to breathe steadily."
I breathed.
But my mind was already moving through every dinner, every holiday, every quiet conversation where Thomas Whitfield had sat at the Sterling table and smiled at me like I was a pleasant addition to a family he had helped hollow out from the inside.
"Does he know the warrant was executed tonight?" I asked.
"Not yet," Diana said.
"His name wasn't on the primary warrant.
We need a second filing."
"How long?"
"Forty-eight hours.
Maybe less."
The ambulance slowed.
The hospital entrance appeared through the back window.
"Audrey," Diana said.
"Have your baby.
I'll be there in the morning."
The doors opened.
May you like
The cold air came in.
And somewhere behind me, at Sterling Ridge Estate, Julian Sterling was learning for the first time what it felt like to be in a room he could not leave.
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