Chapter 8 - THE PRICE OF AN INHERITANCE
Adrian reached down and picked up the torn pink-and-white quilt from the marble floor. He folded it with infinite care, laying it across the green leather blotter of his executive desk, right beside the photograph of Julianna and the tiny plastic hospital bracelet.
Then, he turned around and walked over to the antique bar cart in the corner. He poured two fingers of single-malt scotch into a heavy crystal tumbler, not to drink, but to give his large, tattooed hands something to hold while he calculated the exact geometry of Claudia’s destruction.
"Three years, Claudia," Adrian said, his tone conversational, calm, and terrifyingly cold. "For three years, you sat at my dinner table every Sunday. You brought white roses to Julianna’s tomb every month. You watched me tear through every shipping lane from Montreal to Miami looking for someone to blame for her sudden heart failure."
Claudia was weeping now, ugly, mascara-stained tears streaming down her pale cheeks. She slid down the bookshelves until she was sitting on the floor, her cream dress ruined against the dusty baseboards.
"You don't know what it was like, Adrian!" Claudia sobbed, clutching her diamond ring against her collarbone. "Julianna had everything! She had our father's favor, she had the family trust, and then she married you—the most powerful man in New York! I was left with nothing! A measly allowance from a board that looked at me like a parasite!"
"So you stole my child," Adrian stated flatly.
"I didn't hurt her!" Claudia screamed, looking up with desperate, frantic eyes. "I couldn't kill her, Adrian! I swear to God on Julianna’s soul, I couldn't bring myself to harm a baby! Dr. Mercer owed me half a million from his gambling debts in Atlantic City. He helped me forge the stillbirth certificate while you were stuck on the turnpike. I took her... I drove her to Newark that same night. I left her in the intake cradle of the best shelter in the county! I made sure she was wrapped in Julianna's favorite quilt so she would have something of her mother!"
"And Julianna?" Adrian asked, his voice dropping into a register that made the crystal tumbler in his hand vibrate. "Did you help her die, too?"
Claudia froze. Her eyes went completely blank with a horror that was entirely genuine.
"No!" Claudia shrieked, shaking her head violently. "No, Adrian! No! Julianna’s heart gave out during the emergency Cesarean! That was real! The doctors tried for forty minutes to revive her! I swear it on my life! I only took the baby after Julianna was already gone... because if the baby lived, the entire estate passed directly into an infant trust that you controlled! I would have been cast out on the street!"
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Adrian took a slow sip of the scotch. The amber liquid burned his throat, but it was nothing compared to the cold fire raging in his chest.
"You were always so small, Claudia," Adrian said softly. "You traded my daughter's life for an allowance."
