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Chapter 6: The Fall of the House of Thorne

The next morning, the internet was broken.

#IvyLeagueCheater and #CEOMengYaoRevenge (the internet had lovingly dubbed me with a moniker of ruthless efficiency) were trending globally.

I bypassed the office and drove straight to my father’s sprawling estate in the Hamptons.

When I entered the heavy mahogany study, my father, Arthur Sterling, was sitting by the fire. I walked in and immediately stood at attention.

“Dad. I’m sorry for dragging the Sterling name into a media circus.”

My father looked at me for a long time. He stood up, poured two fingers of Macallan, and handed me a glass.

“When I was your age, your mother ran off with a tennis instructor,” he said gruffly. “I hate disloyalty above all else. You protected your assets and exposed a fraud. You did what a Sterling does.”

Tears, hot and unbidden, finally spilled over my lashes.

“Where is Mia?” I asked, my voice cracking.

My father sighed. “Your mother-in-law picked her up on Friday. If I had known this was blowing up, I would have hired private security to keep her here.”

A commotion echoed from the grand foyer. The oak doors of the study burst open.

My mother-in-law, Eleanor Thorne, marched in, dragging Mia by the hand.

“Victoria!” Eleanor shrieked, her face purple with indignation. “Look at the mess you’ve made! My son is in the hospital with a panic attack! His university suspended him! You vindictive, heartless woman!”

I didn’t blink. I sipped my scotch.

Eleanor kept raving. “Sienna was a sweet girl! You embarrassed her, you ruined her life! Do you have any conscience? You work all the time, you ignore my son—”

Mia tugged on Eleanor’s tweed skirt. “Grandma, Sienna is nice. Mommy is just mean.”

My heart physically ached. My own daughter.

“Shut your mouth, Eleanor,” my father’s voice boomed, rattling the crystal on the bar.

Eleanor flinched.

“My daughter generates hundreds of millions in revenue,” my father snarled, stepping forward. “She bought your son’s clothes. She bought your house. She paid for your hip replacement. Your son makes pennies teaching poetry, and he repays her by screwing her subordinate in the cars my daughter buys. And you have the audacity to defend him?”

Eleanor stammered, realizing she was standing in the den of a lion. “Even so… a wife should forgive…”

My father knelt down to eye-level with Mia. “Mia. Do you want to live with your mother, or your father?”

Mia bit her lip. She looked at me, her eyes cold. “I want to live with Dad and Sienna. They buy me ice cream and they don’t work all the time.”

My father nodded slowly. “Very well. If you go with your father, I will send him an allowance of $500 a month.”

Mia frowned. “But my private school costs $4,000 a month. And my horseback riding is $1,000.”

“Your father will have to pay for that on a suspended teacher’s salary,” my father said clinically. “No more trust fund. No more black cards.”

Mia looked terrified. She looked at Eleanor, then at me. “Mommy…?”

“You made your choice, Mia,” I said quietly, the hardest words I have ever spoken in my life. “You can leave now.”

Eleanor dragged a crying Mia out of the house. It felt like my soul was being torn in two, but I knew I had to break the cycle.

A week later, the tides tried to turn. An anonymous account—clearly Alistair—started a smear campaign online, claiming I was an absent mother and a corporate tyrant who set him up for financial gain.

But Detective Brody Vargas wasn’t done. He went live again, this time from his precinct desk.

He held up an official forensic report. “I processed the evidence. The fingerprints on the aphrodisiac bottle belong exclusively to Sienna Blake. The dashcam footage from the Range Rover confirms a six-month illicit affair. Victoria Sterling is the victim. I have handed everything over to the divorce courts.”

The internet collectively rallied behind me.

My lawyer called me that afternoon as I stood in the penthouse of my newly purchased, $10 million high-rise in Manhattan.

“Alistair’s assets are frozen,” my lawyer reported happily. “He’s renting a roach-infested studio in Queens with Sienna. And… Mia asked to come home. She told Alistair she hated him because the apartment didn’t have a soaking tub.”

“Has he signed the papers?” I asked, watching the city skyline.

“Not yet. But he’s breaking.”

Chapter 7: The Final Verdict

A month later, I was walking out of corporate headquarters when a man threw himself at my feet.

It was Alistair.

He looked ten years older. His designer suit was wrinkled and stained, his hair greasy, his face gaunt.

“Tori! Please!” he sobbed, grabbing my ankles as pedestrians stopped to stare. “I signed the papers! I gave you everything!”

I looked down at him in disgust. “Get off me.”

“Sienna left me,” he cried, his voice pathetic. “Mia won’t even look at me. I have no job, no home. You’re all I have left. Please, Tori, I’ll be the perfect husband. Remember what I said on our wedding day? I swore to love and respect you.”

I stared at him. He was using the exact same lines, the exact same puppy-dog eyes he had used to win me over a decade ago.

I laughed. It was a dark, hollow sound.

I raised my hand and slapped him again, hard enough to cut his lip.

“You think I’m a charity?” I asked loudly, ensuring the crowd heard every word. “You slept with my assistant in my car, you turned my daughter against me, and you think you can crawl back when the money runs out?”

Alistair’s eyes snapped. The charming professor vanished, replaced by a rabid animal.

“If I can’t have my life back, neither can you!” he screamed.

He lunged forward, grabbing me by the lapels of my coat, and violently threw me backward toward the busy street intersection.

Tires squealed. A massive delivery truck laid on its horn, hurtling right toward me.

Time slowed down. I braced for the impact.

Suddenly, a massive hand grabbed the back of my coat and yanked me onto the sidewalk. I collapsed onto the concrete, gasping for air.

It was my private security team, dispatched by my father. Two massive guards tackled Alistair to the ground, pinning his arms behind his back.

The police arrived three minutes later. As they locked the handcuffs onto Alistair’s wrists, reading him his rights for attempted murder, he finally stopped fighting. He looked defeated. Empty.

Three months later, the gavel dropped in criminal court.

“Alistair Thorne,” the judge declared, looking down with disdain. “For the charge of attempted murder in the second degree, I sentence you to four years in a maximum-security penitentiary.”

I walked out of the courthouse, the crisp spring air filling my lungs.

My father was waiting by the black SUV. Standing next to him was Mia.

She looked up at me, her eyes brimming with tears. She had learned a brutal, necessary lesson about the real world, about loyalty, and about the consequences of betrayal.

“Mommy,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I’m so sorry. You’re the best mommy. Can I come home?”

I knelt down on the courthouse steps and pulled my daughter into my arms, burying my face in her hair. “You’re my daughter, Mia. Always.”

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Epilogue

Alistair didn’t survive his sentence. Six months in, he got into an altercation over commissary debt. He suffered a ruptured spleen and died in the prison infirmary. His mother, Eleanor, had a stroke upon hearing the news and was moved into a state-run nursing home.

Sienna’s fate was equally grim. Without my money to prop her up, she spiraled. She ended up heavily in debt, abandoned by her family, and was found dead in a cheap motel by a landlord collecting rent.

When the news of their fates reached me, I was standing in the grand ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, wearing a custom Dior gown.

My assistant—a fiercely loyal, highly vetted professional—leaned in and whispered the news in my ear.

I didn’t blink. I nodded, picked up my champagne flute, and turned back to the podium to accept my award for Global Businesswoman of the Year. I looked out at the crowd, the flashbulbs illuminating the room. But this time, the light wasn’t a trap. It was an empire.

THE END