Chapter 9 - Victor's secret
Victor didn't deny it.
Five years earlier, he received an anonymous location.
A private hospice outside Vermont.
Father was there.
Dying.
Victor went alone.
“You saw him?”
“Yes.”
“And told none of us?”
“He made me promise.”
I slapped him.
Victor accepted it.
“What did you take?”
“A key.”
Father told Victor S7 had been compromised.
Someone had changed its purpose from detecting theft to manufacturing crises.
He believed the architect was one of his own children.
“Which one?”
“He didn't know.”
Victor produced the key from a bank vault.
Physical.
Old-fashioned.
Stamped with a number.
Nathaniel recognized it.
Locker 417.
Sterling National Bank's original Manhattan vault.
We went together.
Inside was a single envelope.
My name.
I opened it.
Not Father's handwriting.
Mother's.
Our mother had died when I was twelve.
Vivienne,
If Charles ever gives you this letter, it means he finally discovered what I did.
I stopped.
My mother?
The letter explained that S7 wasn't Father's invention.
It was hers.
She had discovered financial irregularities inside Sterling decades earlier and built a primitive monitoring system.
Charles expanded it after her death.
But Mother had hidden something from him.
A private account.
Not stolen money.
Payments.
For a child.
Twenty-six years of them.
Recipient:
Chloe Bennett.
Chloe wasn't merely Father's operative.
My mother had financed her entire childhood.
Why?
Then I reached the final paragraph.
Chloe is not Charles's daughter.
She is mine.
Do not let your brothers punish her for what I did.
I read it twice.
My mother had another daughter.
My half-sister.
Chloe.
Suddenly her obsession with the Sterlings made sense.
Except one thing didn't.
If she wanted recognition…
Why destroy us?
Then Victor's phone rang.
Security.
Chloe was gone.
May you like
So was Dominic.
And the original S7 card had disappeared with them.
