HIS OWN SISTER PUSHED HIS BRIDE OFF THE ROOFTOP ON THEIR WEDDING DAY! The groom jumped into the pool below to save his wife, but his sister wasn't finished yet. What he did when she attacked them again left everyone speechless!

Clara looked at the document in Evelyn’s hand. The legal header was embossed in dark navy ink: **STERLING MARITIME TRUST - EMPOWERMENT CODICIL.**

"What is that?" Clara asked, stepping up beside Julian.

"This," Evelyn said, her voice dripping with aristocratic disdain, "is the original copy of your uncle’s blackmail clause. Arthur Vance thought he was so clever. But he included one very specific stipulation on page fourteen."

Evelyn held the paper up to the flickering fluorescent light, reading with cruel satisfaction:

*"In the event that the designated Vance heir and the Sterling heir are unable to execute a legal marriage in the presence of an ordained minister and at least two blood witnesses before midnight on the seventh anniversary, the entire marital trust is voided, and all controlling shares revert unconditionally to Evelyn Sterling."*

Evelyn looked at Julian with an icy, triumphant smile.

"Not Victoria," Evelyn said softly. "To me. Victoria was foolish enough to believe she would get the company. But I’m the one who survived forty years of your father’s madness. I’m the one who kept this family from imploding."

Victoria’s head snapped toward her mother, her face twisting in utter betrayal. "What? Mother... you said—"

"Quiet, Victoria!" Evelyn snapped without even looking at her daughter. "You are reckless, sloppy, and completely incapable of running a conglomerate. You tried to throw a girl off a roof at a party with three hundred witnesses! You’re a liability."

Victoria looked like she had been slapped across the face with a frozen glove. The woman who had just tried to kill for her family was suddenly realizing she was nothing more than an expendable pawn in her mother's game.

"You used me," Victoria breathed, horror washing over her features. "You unlocked the maintenance gate key code for me. You told me the trust would trigger if the wedding finished!"

"I told you what you needed to hear to ensure Clara didn't walk down that aisle," Evelyn said dismissively, turning back to Julian. "Julian, look around you. The rooftop is evacuated. The minister left an hour ago. The guests are being ushered into limousines. You cannot get married in forty minutes. You don't have an officiant, and you don't have witnesses."

Evelyn took a step toward Julian, offering him a golden Montblanc pen from her purse.

"Sign the waiver, Julian. Relinquish your claim to the board. Agree to send Victoria to a private psychiatric clinic in Switzerland instead of state prison, and I will give you and Clara fifty million dollars to walk away and never set foot in New York again."

Clara looked at Julian.

Fifty million dollars was an unimaginable fortune to an orphan who used to count pennies for bus fare. They could leave right now. They could disappear to Europe, buy a villa, and never look back at this toxic, monstrous family.

Julian looked down at the pen in his mother’s hand. Then he looked at Victoria, sitting broken and betrayed in the corner. Then he looked at Clara—bruised, bleeding, but standing tall beside him with fire in her eyes.

"You really don't understand, do you, Mother?" Julian said quietly.

"Understand what?" Evelyn frowned.

Julian reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, holding it up so the screen was illuminated.

"I didn't call the police when we left the penthouse," Julian said.

Evelyn blinked. "What?"

"I called Judge Harrison," Julian smiled, a cold, dangerous smile that made Evelyn’s face instantly lose its color. "The Chief Judge of the New York Supreme Court. The man Father spent twenty years trying to bribe, and the only man in this city who hates you more than I do."

The heavy fire doors at the end of the basement corridor banged open.