Chapter 3
The Judgement
The sharp, rhythmic click of Ava Vance’s stiletto heels faded down the marble corridor of the small conference room, but the aftershock she left behind was nothing short of a detonated nuclear bomb.
Liam Sterling stood frozen in place, his hands still hovering in the empty air where Ava had just been standing. A suffocating lump forms in his throat. A wave of profound, agonizing regret sparked from the depths of his chest, roaring up to choke the very air from his lungs.
“Avery… she’s alive… and Leo is my son,” Liam mumbled, his bloodshot, hollow eyes staring blankly at the half-open door. For the past five years, he had lived in a state of blind, toxic hatred, only to realize that he was the monster who had single-handedly pushed the only woman who truly loved him into the abyss.
“Liam! Snap out of it!” Victoria Sterling—his mother—hissed, her sharp, once-regal face twisting into a mask of pure panic. She lunged forward, snatching the tablet off the conference table. The screen was still flashing a live countdown from Ava’s anonymous account. “We don’t have time for pathetic sentimentality! That woman is about to tear the Sterling dynasty down! Four billion dollars? If that audio recording leaks, our group’s stock will evaporate into thin air within ten minutes!”
Without losing another second, Mrs. Sterling dialed the Head of Global Security and Crisis Management. “Activate Shield Level 1. Take down every media server connected to the name Ava Vance or Avery Sterling. Locate where she is hiding the boy, Leo, right now! At all costs, make that bitch shut her mouth before sunrise!”
But Victoria had no idea that the Ava Vance of today was no longer the naive, fragile Avery of five years ago whom she could easily manipulate.
Inside a high-security penthouse overlooking Manhattan, Ava stepped through the door, removing her expensive sunglasses. The icy armor on her face instantly melted away as a small figure dashed across the room and threw his arms around her.
“Mommy!” Leo, a four-year-old boy with ash-grey eyes that were an exact replica of Liam’s, hugged her neck tightly.
“My sweet Leo, have you been a good boy?” Ava held her son close, breathing in his familiar, comforting scent. This boy was the only reason she had crawled back from the dead. This was the reason she had agreed to sell her soul to the cutthroat vultures of Wall Street to secure her new identity as Ava Vance—the reigning queen of New York’s venture capital.
A man stepped out from the shadows of the dimly lit room. It was Julian Thorne—a ruthless, silver-tongued attorney widely known as “The Cleaner for the Billionaire Class.” He was also her sole ally, the only person who knew the dark truth of her past.
“Victoria Sterling has taken the bait,” Julian said smoothly, gently swirling the amber liquid in his crystal lowball glass. “She’s pulling every old-money favor to blackout the mainstream media. The front-page exposes set for tomorrow morning have already been scrubbed. In fact, she just authorized a fifty-million-dollar bounty to put a hit team on your son’s location.”
Ava didn’t look even remotely surprised. Instead, a cold, lethal smile crept onto her lips. “I expected nothing less from her. But as the saying goes: ‘If you can’t control the media, become the media.’ Does Victoria really think her dirty money can block out the sun? Julian, activate Phase B.”
Ava’s Phase B was a calculated, direct strike at high society’s greatest vulnerability: their catastrophic arrogance. Instead of leaking the tape to the traditional press like The New York Times, she had bypassed them entirely. Through a pre-scheduled cyber-strike, she routed the audio directly into the mainframe of the giant LED billboards stretching across Times Square, as well as thousands of digital displays throughout the New York subway network.
3:00 AM.
Liam Sterling drove frantically through the deserted streets of New York. He desperately needed to find Ava, to beg for a shred of mercy, but her phone was completely untraceable. Midst his chaotic thoughts, his sports car slammed to a halt, trapped at a major intersection in Times Square due to a sudden, bizarre traffic gridlock.
All at once, the massive, towering screens that usually flashed advertisements for luxury perfumes and high fashion began to flicker violently before cutting to absolute black.
A second later, Victoria Sterling’s voice boomed over the city’s public audio systems—amplified, crystal clear, and dripping with merciless cruelty:
“Throw that worthless bitch Avery out onto the street. The baby? We keep him as the legitimate heir, but tell Liam the child was stillborn. My idiotic son doesn’t need to know the truth about her filthy, low-class bloodline…”
Thousands of late-night pedestrians and drivers caught in the gridlock simultaneously looked up, their faces washed in the neon glow of the screens. A collective gasp rippled through the crowd like a disrupted hornets’ nest. Instantly, phones began buzzing and chiming in unison with breaking news push-notifications from every social platform. The audio went globally viral in less than sixty seconds.
Liam collapsed onto his steering wheel, hot tears of utter humiliation and rage burning his eyes. His mother’s empire, his own pride, the unblemished honor of the Sterling family… it had all officially turned to ash tonight.
The following morning, the grand lobby of the Sterling Group headquarters was completely besieged by hundreds of aggressive reporters and armed federal agents from the FBI. An emergency arrest warrant for Victoria Sterling had been issued on charges of conspiracy to kidnap, falsification of government death certificates, and high-level corporate bribery.
Mrs. Sterling was escorted out of the glass tower in cold steel handcuffs, desperately using her Chanel coat to shield her pale, defeated face from the flashing cameras.
Watching from a distance, stepping out of a sleek, midnight-black Rolls-Royce, Ava Vance appeared clad in a powerful, immaculate white pantsuit. She stared at Victoria with the piercing, satisfied gaze of an apex predator that had just closed in on its prey.
Liam broke through the chaotic crowd, lunging frantically toward her. The security details instantly blocked his path, but Ava raised a single hand, signaling them to stand down.
“Ava… I am so sorry… please, just let me see Leo. The boy is my son, I have a right…” Liam begged, the legendary arrogance of the billionaire entirely shattered.
Ava stepped closer, leaning in until her breath brushed his ear. Her voice was ice, but her words cut like a serrated dagger. “You want to exercise your paternal rights now, Mr. Sterling? Too little, too late. Look behind you.”
Liam turned his head. From the back seat of Ava’s car, a middle-aged man stepped out onto the pavement. The moment his face caught the light, Liam’s jaw dropped, and a deafening silence fell over the surrounding reporters.
It was Arthur Sterling—the titan father who had been declared dead in a tragic plane crash seven years ago, the very man Victoria had destroyed to seize control of the family fortune. He wasn’t dead. And standing right beside him was Julian Thorne.
Arthur Sterling looked at his son, his eyes filled with absolute, profound disappointment. “Liam, your mother ruined you, and you ruined Avery. Today, I am back to reclaim the Sterling Group… and hand it over to the only person worthy of the name.”
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The old titan placed his hand firmly on Ava Vance’s shoulder.
Ava flashed a theatrical, devastating smile at Liam, who stood frozen and broken amidst the sea of flashing media cameras. “The game has only just begun, Liam. I’m not just taking your son. I am going to take every single penny that bears the name Sterling.”
