Chapter 3 - Room 412The radiator in the motel on 10th Avenue clanked like someone was hitting it with a pipe wrench every twenty minutes.
Claire sat on the edge of the stiff, floral-patterned mattress with a coarse brown towel wrapped around her wet foot. The room smelled of bleach, old carpet, and cheap lemon cleaner. Marcus had left an hour ago to secure the physical hard drives from her father’s former estate planner in White Plains, leaving her with a burner phone, two bottles of ginger ale, and a stack of photocopied corporate filings.
She picked up the first sheet. Her father's signature was right at the bottom, jagged and slanting to the left—the way it always looked after his stroke in 2024.
Beneath his name was a second signature: David Mercer.
Claire stared at the name. Mercer. The name wasn't in any of the Sterling group directories. It wasn't in her father’s personal address book. But there it was, listed as the controlling proxy for forty percent of the offshore manufacturing patents.
Her burner phone buzzed against the nightstand, vibrating loudly across the cheap laminate wood.
She answered without checking. "Marcus?"
"Claire."
It wasn't Marcus. It was Evelyn.
Claire didn't speak. She held the plastic receiver against her ear, listening to the muffled background noise on the other end—the clinking of silverware, the low hum of a television playing the Times Square broadcast.
"You left your prenatal vitamins on the kitchen island," Evelyn said in that dry, measured tone she used when speaking to catering staff. "Ryan is terribly upset. He threw up in the half-bath downstairs. You know how his stomach gets when he's stressed."
"Evelyn," Claire said, her voice flat. "Don't."
"We’re a family, Claire. We make arrangements. You don't have the stomach for what your father built. You never did. You wanted to curate art in SoHo while the rest of us actually kept the payroll running."
"You forged my name."
"A legal formality to protect the assets during your recovery," Evelyn replied seamlessly. "You're six months along. If something happens during delivery—God forbid—we cannot have the entire holding company frozen in probate for eighteen months. Be reasonable."
Claire felt a cold prickle at the base of her skull. "What do you mean, if something happens during delivery?"
Silence stretched across the line. Just the crackle of static and the distant cheer of the New Year's Eve crowd filtering through Evelyn's phone.
"Come home, Claire," Evelyn said softly. "Before we have to report your vehicle stolen."
May you like
"It's my car."
"The lease is under the holding company," Evelyn said, and hung up.
