Chapter 4 - The House of Cards
Rowan’s knees buckled slightly, his hand reaching out blindly behind him to grip the brass doorknob for support. He looked from Gideon Sterling to me, then back to my father, his brain visibly short-circuiting as he tried to connect the dots between the poor, unassuming "salesman's daughter" he had married and the most influential billionaire investor in the Midwest.
“Phoebe…” Rowan stammered, his voice cracking into a pathetic, high-pitched whine. “What… what is going on? Why is Mr. Sterling here? Is this some kind of… some kind of sick joke?”
“Does this look like a joke to you, Rowan?” I asked calmly, leaning back against the hospital pillows, looking down at my sleeping son before raising my eyes to meet my husband’s panicked gaze.
Dad didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. When a man like Gideon Sterling spoke, the entire room instinctively fell silent.
“You’ve been married to my daughter for three years, young man,” Dad said, stepping closer until Rowan was practically flattened against the wood of the door. “In that time, you’ve treated her like a servant, dismissed her feelings, humiliated her in front of your mother, and abandoned her while she gave birth to my grandson. And worse than that… you thought you could hide your incompetence behind her back.”
Rowan swallowed hard, sweat beading instantly along his hairline. “I… I don't know what you’re talking about, sir. Phoebe and I have a wonderful marriage—!”
“Shut up,” Dad commanded quietly. The single word carried so much raw authority that Rowan clamped his mouth shut instantly, trembling like a leaf in a hurricane.
I picked up my laptop from the over-bed table, turning the screen around so Rowan could see the glowing spreadsheet displayed across it.
“I was bored while waiting for the contractions to stop, Rowan,” I said, my voice sweet and steady. “So I decided to catch up on some light reading. Specifically, the internal expense ledgers and wire transfer logs for Apex Logistics over the past eighteen months.”
The color drained from Rowan’s face a second time, leaving him looking like a corpse. The blood rushed out of his cheeks so fast I thought he might actually pass out right there on the linoleum floor.
“The… the internal ledgers?” Rowan choked out. “How… how did you get those? Those are restricted corporate documents!”
“You left your administrative login credentials saved on our shared home desktop, darling,” I reminded him, tilting my head. “It turns out that setting your password to your mother’s birthday isn't the best security practice when your wife happens to be a trained forensic accountant.”
Rowan’s eyes darted frantically between my laptop screen and my father. He realized, in one agonizing, crystal-clear moment, that his entire double life had been completely exposed. The shell companies, the offshore wire transfers, the Miami real estate, and the embezzlement scheme he had orchestrated to bail out Selina’s failing investments—it was all right there in black and white, fully audited, encrypted, and backed up on a secure federal cloud server.
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“Phoebe… please,” Rowan whispered, his knees finally giving out entirely. He slid down the hospital door until he was sitting flat on the floor, burying his face in his shaking hands. “You can’t turn those over to the board. If you do, I’ll be indicted. I’ll go to federal prison for wire fraud and embezzlement! Mom… Mom will be ruined!”
“Then I suggest you call your mother and tell her the party is officially over,” I said, closing my laptop with a soft, satisfying click.
