Chapter 3 - THE LETTER TO VERONICA
Alexander tore open the envelope.
Inside was a copy of an email.
FROM: Lucia Reyes
TO: Veronica Ashford
I know why your family needs Alexander to marry before the Sterling trust review. I also know what happens if Sofia is recognized.
Leave my daughter alone.
Alexander read it twice.
"What happens if Sofia is recognized?"
"I have no idea."
Maria said, "Lucia did."
Alexander called his attorney, Hannah Price.
She arrived forty minutes later.
Veronica refused to leave until Alexander ordered security to escort her to the gate.
"You'll regret humiliating me," she said.
"I already regret letting you into this house."
After Veronica left, Hannah opened the Sterling family trust.
Alexander had read it years earlier.
He had never read the child-contingency section.
If Alexander had no legal descendants by age forty, twenty-eight percent of Sterling Holdings voting shares transferred permanently to the Sterling-Ashford Foundation upon his marriage to an approved spouse.
Veronica was an approved spouse.
Their wedding was in eleven days.
If Sofia was legally recognized first, the shares went into a protected trust for her.
"So my daughter is worth twenty-eight percent of my company."
Hannah corrected him.
"No. She's entitled to twenty-eight percent. There's a difference."
"What did Veronica know?"
Maria reached for Sofia's hand.
Sofia whispered, "She found my box."
"What box?"
"My mom's letters."
"When?"
"Yesterday."
Sofia explained.
Lucia had left a small wooden box for her.
Letters.
Photographs.
A birth bracelet.
One sealed document Sofia had never opened.
Veronica found it in Maria's room.
"She said if I told anyone, Aunt Maria would go to jail."
"Where is the box now?"
Sofia pointed upstairs.
"In her room."
Security searched Veronica's suite.
The box was gone.
But they found something else.
A shredded laboratory envelope in the bathroom trash.
Hannah pieced together the label.
PATERNITY ANALYSIS.
Alexander Sterling.
Sofia Reyes.
May you like
"She already tested us."
"And she didn't want you to see the result."
