Chapter 3 - The Doctor's Diagnosis
By 2:00 AM, the mansion was lit up like a command bunker.
Dr. Harrison, the Sterling family's private physician, sat in the master nursery room upstairs, examining Lily with an infrared heat scanner and an otoscope while Maria rested downstairs in the private medical suite with three stitches above her right brow.
"Her core body temperature drops were significant, Julien," Dr. Harrison said, setting his instruments down on the wooden side table while Lily slept under three thick goose-down blankets. "She was inside that industrial unit for at least fifteen minutes. Another ten minutes in those sub-zero conditions, and her small lungs would have suffered permanent tissue damage."
Julien sat on the edge of his daughter's bed, holding her tiny hand in his broad palm, kissing her knuckles over and over again.
"She's stable now," Harrison added softly, placing a reassuring hand on Julien's shoulder. "Her skin color is returning to normal, and there are no signs of frostbite on her extremities. But the psychological trauma... Julien, a child doesn't forget being locked in the dark by a parental figure."
"She won't ever have to see that woman again," Julien swore softly, his jaw set like granite. "I'm filing for an immediate annulment and criminal charges tomorrow morning."
"There's something else you need to see," Dr. Harrison said, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a small clear plastic bag containing the velvet box and the Polaroid photograph. "Dante ran the serial numbers on that pink diamond ring through the insurance registry while we were stabilizing Lily."
Julien turned his head. "And?"
"That ring wasn't stolen forty-eight hours before Eleanor's crash," Harrison revealed quietly. "It was listed as collateral on a secret offshore bank account opened in the Cayman Islands in June 2018—one month before that photo in Sorrento was taken."
Julien stared at the physician. "A Cayman account? Under whose name?"
"The primary account holder was Eleanor Sterling," Harrison whispered. "But the secondary authorized signatory... was Vanessa Vance."
Julien felt as though the air had been sucked completely out of his lungs.
For seven long years, he had believed his young wife Eleanor was a naive, innocent heiress who had lost control of her sports car on a icy mountain road outside Boston. He had spent seven years grieving, burying himself in his international shipping firm, leaving his daughter largely in the care of hired nannies while he ran from the memory of her death.
Now, a single shattered crystal cabinet had revealed that his late wife and his current wife had been connected by millions of dollars in untraceable offshore assets months before Eleanor’s death.
"Dante," Julien said into his lapel microphone.
May you like
"Sir?" the security chief answered instantly through the earpiece.
"Bring the drive from Eleanor's safe down to my private study," Julien ordered. "And tell the guards upstairs that Vanessa Vance doesn't get a drop of water until she tells me what happened in Sorrento seven years ago."
