Chapter 2 - BLOOD AND BOARDROOMS
The shattering glass was more than a ruined toast; it was the sound of Julian’s carefully constructed empire fracturing.
Julian was thirty-four years and eleven months old. He was precisely three weeks shy of his thirty-fifth birthday. For six months, his rush to wed Chloe Mercer had been driven by a frantic need to produce an heir before time ran out, preventing the controlling shares from defaulting to his estranged, crippled half-cousin—Alexander Sterling.
“You’re lying!” Julian hissed, all composure abandoned. “You were confirmed infertile! My family’s private physician personally verified your medical reports!”
“You mean the doctor recommended by Chloe?” Elena looked out at the howling blizzard sweeping across Manhattan. “The one who prescribed me ‘hormone balancers’ that were actually long-term fertility suppressants? You were so busy at your private villa that you never bothered to review my independent medical files.”
“Elena… hang up right now!” Chloe’s shrill voice suddenly barged in over the speaker. She had snatched the phone from Julian’s hand. “Elena, don't you dare try to blackmail us on my wedding day! Where did you get that baby? We will sue you for fraud!”
“I no longer carry your surname, Chloe,” Elena said quietly. “And I don't need to sue anyone. My attorney submitted my temporary DNA panel and certified birth records to the Sterling Global Board of Directors ten minutes ago.”
A second phone began ringing frantically in Julian’s hand—an emergency call from the Chairman of the Board.
Elena didn't wait to hear him answer. She tapped 'end call' and set the phone face-down on the bedside table.
Her sister Victoria pushed open the door, holding two paper cups of coffee. She took one look at Elena, then down at the newborn boy opening his dark, intelligent eyes.
“It’s done?” Victoria asked, her eyes sharp with the instincts of a top-tier trial lawyer.
“It’s done,” Elena whispered, stroking the soft hair on her son’s head. “Now the real war begins.”
Before the words could fully settle, the door to the VIP suite swung open. It wasn't Julian. It wasn't the press.
Rolled in by a towering, broad-shouldered bodyguard sat Alexander Sterling—the reclusive, wheelchair-bound outcast of the Sterling dynasty who had been ruthlessly purged from the board by Julian six months prior.
May you like
Alexander looked at the infant resting on Elena’s chest, then lifted his piercing gray eyes to meet hers. A dangerous, slow smile curled at the corner of his lips.
“Hello, sister-in-law,” he murmured in a voice like gravel over velvet. “Thank you for delivering our new Chairman.”
