I stopped precisely three feet from Carter Holbrook’s chair.
I laid the broken photograph of my wife and daughters flat atop the master merger contract, right over the signature block:
*CLACK.
*
“The woman on Route Six gave it to me, Carter,” I said softly.
My voice had no volume.
It dropped into that quiet, terrifying, sub-zero forty-decibel register that precedes an un-appealable court-martial execution:
“Her name is **Eleanor Vance-Sterling**.”
“Your older sister.”
“The primary beneficial trustee of the sixty-million-dollar maritime portfolio that you and Nick have been trying to liquidate for three years.”
The room plunged into an arctic, radioactive void.
Nick Sterling took two stumbling, uncoordinated steps forward, his face an apoplectic, mottled purple hue:
“Sebastian!
You lying piece of garbage!
My aunt Eleanor has been in an assisted-living facility in Scottsdale for eighteen months!
