Chapter 3 - Whispers in the Family
The storm didn't take long to break. By seven that evening, my phone was ringing while Emily and I were chopping vegetables for dinner in our kitchen.
I glanced at the caller ID: *Eleanor Sterling*. My mother.
Emily noticed the shift in my posture. She set down her paring knife and wiped her hands on an apron, her calm, hazel eyes searching mine. "Is that her?"
"Right on schedule," I said, letting out a breath.
I tapped the speaker button and set the phone on the quartz island. "Hello, Mom."
"Justin! What on earth did you say to your brother?" Her voice carried that familiar, sharp register of aristocratic disappointment—the tone she used whenever one of my actions disrupted Derek's comfort. "He called me in absolute shambles. He said you humiliated him in public, demanding financial records like he was a criminal applying for a loan at a pawnshop!"
"I told him the conditions under which I would consider risking my personal capital, Mom," I answered smoothly, continuing to slice a red pepper. "Fifty thousand dollars is not pocket change. If his business is solvent, providing balance sheets shouldn't take more than an hour."
"He is your brother!" she snapped, her voice rising through the speaker. "He gave you the courtesy of coming to you directly, trusting that you’d act like a Sterling! After everything that happened with your father passing, I thought you had grown past this childish resentment. Claire is suffering terribly from the stress. Do you want to see your brother ruined over a technicality?"
"A technicality?" I echoed, pausing my knife. "If he can't produce a balance sheet, Mom, he isn't suffering from a technicality. He’s insolvent. And as for Claire, her stress ceased to be my concern the day she exchanged rings with Derek at St. Jude’s while you all pretended I was the villain for refusing to attend."
A brief, icy silence fell across the line. My mother wasn't accustomed to me pushing back so directly. For years, I had chosen silence over confrontation, preferring to quietly withdraw rather than participate in their theatrical dysfunction.
"You've become cold, Justin," she said, dropping her voice to an accusatory whisper. "This money you've made... it’s changed you. Your father would be ashamed to see you hoarding wealth while your brother drowns."
"My father left Derek forty percent of his estate and left me twenty percent because Derek convinced him I lacked the ambition to manage large assets," I reminded her. "Where did Derek's forty percent go, Mom? Why is he asking me for fifty thousand dollars when Dad left him nearly seven hundred thousand three years ago?"
The silence on the other end stretched, heavy and hollow.
"I expect you to do the right thing," she whispered, unable to answer the question. "He’s family. Don't forget who stood by you growing up."
She hung up without waiting for a reply.
Emily stepped over, placing a warm hand on my shoulder. "You don't owe them a single cent, Justin. You know that, right?"
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"I know," I said, looking out the kitchen window into the twilight of our yard. "I don't plan on giving him a gift. But I do plan on finding out where seven hundred thousand dollars vanished in three short years."
***
