I was trapped inside the Sterling estate, with the police on their way to arrest me for stealing my own mother’s ring.
I pounded my fists against the heavy mahogany door.
“Let me out!” I shouted, though I knew the thick walls of the study would swallow the sound.
Only silence answered me from the hallway.
My heart hammered against my ribs, and my breaths came in short, panicked gasps.
Victoria was going to have me arrested, thrown in a cell, and discredited before I ever had a chance to speak the truth.
I turned my back to the door and slid down to the floor, trying to force myself to think clearly.
I looked around the private study, my eyes adjusting to the dim light spilling from a single brass desk lamp.
The room smelled of old paper, expensive leather, and lemon polish.
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined the walls, filled with heavy legal volumes and family histories.
In the center of the room sat a massive, ornate wooden desk.
It was Arthur Sterling’s desk, the patriarch of the family, the man who had supposedly ordered our exile.
I slowly pushed myself up from the floor and walked over to it.
If I was going to be arrested tonight, I wasn't going to go down without a fight.
I needed something, anything, to prove who I was and what they had done to us.
I began pulling open the top drawers of the desk, tossing aside expensive pens, blank stationary, and reading glasses.
Nothing useful.
I moved to the side drawers, yanking them open one by one, sifting through mundane tax documents and charity ledgers.
Then, I pulled the bottom right drawer.
It didn't move.
I pulled harder, but the drawer was firmly locked.
My pulse quickened.
I looked frantically around the desk and grabbed a heavy brass letter opener shaped like a dagger.
I wedged the sharp tip of the letter opener into the small gap above the lock.
I gripped the handle with both hands and pushed down with all my weight.
The wood splintered, snapping with a loud crack, and the metal lock gave way.
The drawer slid open, revealing a perfectly organized set of manila folders.
I pulled the first folder out and opened it beneath the light of the brass lamp.
The name on the tab made the breath catch in my throat: Oakwood Holdings.
My hands shook as I flipped through the pages.
They were bank statements, wire transfers, and signed authorization forms.
Every single month for the past twenty years, massive sums of money had been funneled from the Sterling trust into Oakwood Holdings.
And Oakwood Holdings had paid the upstate medical facility to keep my mother drugged, isolated, and hidden.
But the most devastating piece of paper was at the very back of the folder.
It was a single letter, typed on thick, expensive stationary with the Sterling family crest at the top.
The letter was dated twenty years ago, just two weeks after my father died in the car accident.
It read: "Isabelle, you and the child are no longer recognized as members of this family. You will remain where you are placed. Never contact us again."
At the bottom of the page, scrawled in dark blue ink, was a large, looping signature.
Arthur Sterling.
Tears blurred my vision, and a hot, suffocating wave of grief crashed over me.
My mother had spent her final days crying for a man who had actively paid to keep us locked in hell.
Arthur was the mastermind.
Victoria was just his willing executioner.
I folded the Oakwood documents and the letter, stuffing them into the deep pockets of my black catering skirt.