Chapter 245
The agents were moving toward Victor.
“Check him too,” I told the lead agent. “He’s a signatory on the shell accounts.”
“Hey! Get off me!” Victor shouted as he was slammed against the wall and cuffed. The jewelry box fell from his hands, spilling emeralds across the dusty floor.
“Skye! You bitch!” Victor screamed as they hauled him out.
Within minutes, the room was cleared of the family. Only the silence remained, heavy and final.
I stood.
“You have one hour,” I said to the empty room, though I knew the forensic team was listening.
“Ms. Sterling.” Ms. Davies entered from the back entrance, where she had been coordinating with the agents. “The house is secured.”
“Good,” I said. “Change the locks. And burn that armchair.”
I walked toward the door, where Harper was waiting. Harper bounced on her toes and held up her hand for a high-five.
“That,” Harper grinned, slapping my hand, “was better than a movie.”
Ms. Davies handed me a tablet. “The news choppers are overhead. Twitter is exploding. SterlingRaid is trending number one.”
I looked at the screen. The comments were mixed. Some cheered, but others—bots, likely paid for by Liam—were already spinning the narrative.
Ungrateful niece destroys family.
“They’re trying to paint me as the villain,” I noted.
“Let them,” I said, looking back at the chaotic living room where FBI agents boxed up files. “A villain is just a victim whose story hasn’t been told yet. And I’m about to grab the microphone.”
Petunia and Victor stood on the sidewalk outside the Sterling Manor gates. Their piles of Louis Vuitton luggage looked ridiculous stacked on dirty concrete. It started to drizzle—an apathetic, spitting rain that ruined Petunia’s blowout.
They hadn’t been taken to jail immediately; the officers cited them for trespassing and ordered them off the premises while the federal investigation processed the new charges. For now, they were simply homeless.
“She can’t do this to us,” Victor spat, kicking a suitcase. “We’re Sterlings!”
“We have nothing, Victor!” Petunia wailed. “She froze the accounts! My cards were declined for the Uber!”
𝗖𝗈𝘮𝗽𝗅е𝘁𝖾 𝘤ha𝘱t𝗲𝗿ѕ 𝗈𝗻 𝗯𝖾𝗹𝗇𝗈𝘷еl𝘴.𝖼оm
Victor pulled out his phone. His eyes lit up with a malicious idea.
“We don’t need money to hurt her,” he said. “We need an audience.”
He opened Instagram. He propped his phone on a stack of suitcases, framing the shot so the imposing gates of the manor loomed behind them, with the police tape clearly visible.
“Fix your hair, Mom,” Victor commanded. “Look sad. Look like a victim.”
Petunia immediately slumped her shoulders and wiped at her eyes, smearing her mascara further.
“Action.”
Victor hit Go Live.
“Guys,” Victor said to the camera, his voice trembling with fake emotion, “I don’t even know what to say. My cousin… Skye Sterling… she just threw her own family onto the street.”
Within minutes, the viewer count jumped. Five hundred. Two thousand. Ten thousand. People loved a train wreck.
“She framed my dad,” Victor continued. “She planted evidence. She’s working with criminals to steal our inheritance. We have nowhere to go. We’re homeless.”
Petunia chimed in, sobbing loudly. “I changed her diapers! I loved her like my own! And she laughed as the FBI took my husband!”
Inside the manor, in the command center Ms. Davies had set up in the dining room, Harper watched the stream on a large monitor.