Chapter 9 - The Ghost in Montreal
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"Wait a second," Lucas said, leaning over Julian’s shoulder to stare at the tablet screen. "Why the hell would Dad send four million dollars in bearer bonds to a shipping company in Montreal three days before our anniversary—while only putting five hundred grand down on Valerie’s condo in Chicago?"
"Because Valerie Vane wasn't where your father’s real money was going," Evelyn said, her voice dropping so low and tight that all three of her sons turned instantly to look at her.
Julian’s sharp eyes narrowed as he watched his mother’s face pale by a shade. "Mom—you recognize that corporate name in Montreal. Who is St. Jude’s Maritime Holdings?"
Evelyn stood up slowly from the head of the mahogany table and walked over to the tall bay windows looking out at the snow-covered rose garden and the gray expanse of Lake Michigan beyond the cliffs.
For thirty-two years, she had kept the darkest chapter of Arthur Sterling’s rise to power locked inside a mental vault, because revealing it when her boys were young would have torn the Chicago syndicate in half during the nineties war.
"In November of 1998," Evelyn began quietly, wrapping her arms lightly around her waist as she looked out at the snow, "Julian was two years old, and I was seven months pregnant with Damon. My father, Don Lorenzo, had just suffered his first heart attack, and there were two men competing to take over day-to-day control of the family while my father recovered: your father, Arthur... and my father’s thirty-year-old nephew from Montreal, Victor Conti."
Damon frowned. "Cousin Victor? Dad told us Victor stole two million from Grandpa’s union fund in '98 and got killed by the Irish mob in Boston when he tried to run!"
"That was the story your father and the police told my dying father," Evelyn said, turning back to face her three sons. "And St. Jude’s Maritime Holdings was the legitimate Montreal tugboat company owned by Victor Conti’s young widow, Claire—who vanished into Quebec with her newborn child the week after Victor’s car was blown up outside Boston."
A heavy, electric silence fell over the library.
Julian’s mind—trained to dissect ten-layer financial conspiracies in seconds—connected the dots before his brothers could even speak.
"If Victor Conti stole from Grandpa and was killed by the Irish in 1998," Julian said slowly, "there is zero reason on earth why Arthur Sterling would secretly wire four million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds to Victor Conti’s widow’s shell company in Montreal twenty-eight years later."
"Unless Victor Conti never stole a dime from Grandpa Lorenzo," Lucas breathed, his eyes widening. "Unless Dad was the one who blew up Cousin Victor’s car in 1998 so Grandpa would hand him the crown—and somebody in Montreal has been blackmailing Dad with proof of it!"
"Look at the frequency of the wires in the Zurich log," Julian said grimly, tapping the tablet screen to expand the ten-year historical archive that Arthur had kept sealed behind his personal presidential password until this morning’s Clause Nine revocation unlocked it. "Dad didn't just send four million on Tuesday. Every December fourteenth for the last twenty-six years, Dad has wired two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to that Montreal account—until this week, when whoever holds that account demanded a four-million-dollar lump-sum buyout!"
Wait.
Evelyn walked swiftly back to the table and took the tablet from Julian’s hands, her eyes scanning the wire routing slips from Montreal.
The four-million-dollar buyout on December fourteenth hadn't stayed in Montreal.
Forty-eight hours after hitting the St. Jude’s Maritime account in Quebec, three point eight million of the funds had been wired right back across the U.S. border into a private commercial bank in Milwaukee, Wisconsin—to a holding company that had just purchased the defaulted debt notes on Vane Auto Body & Custom in Bridgeport and paid the $50,000 catering deposit for Valerie Vane’s modeling agency!
Evelyn’s breath stopped dead in her throat.
"Julian," Evelyn whispered, her knuckles turning white on the edge of the silver tablet. "Pull up the original 1998 birth and marriage records from Montreal for Victor Conti’s widow, Claire."
"Running it through the Canadian civil registry relay now," Julian said, sitting down at the desk terminal and typing at lightning speed. Twenty seconds later, two scanned French-Canadian civil certificates popped up on the monitor. "Claire Conti reverted to her mother’s maiden name in 1999 when she moved from Montreal to Milwaukee with her one-year-old son, Ricky, and her newborn daughter..."
Julian’s fingers froze over the keyboard as he read the maiden name on the 1999 border crossing document:
Claire Vane.
And the two children listed on the 1999 naturalization card:
Richard "Ricky" Vane (Born 1997).
Valerie Marie Vane (Born 1999).
All three brothers stared at the glowing screen in stunned silence.
Valerie Vane—the twenty-six-year-old "mistress" who had seduced Arthur Sterling a year ago, drained his accounts, stolen his truck routes, and walked into his tenth anniversary gala last night to slap Evelyn across the face and blow up the Sterling family from the inside out—was Victor Conti’s biological daughter!
Wait—that meant Valerie was Evelyn’s own first cousin once removed!
And Valerie hadn't seduced fifty-four-year-old Arthur Sterling because she wanted a penthouse on Astor Street or because she was a ditzy gold-digger!
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She had spent a year sleeping with the man who murdered her father in 1998—purposefully engineering the exact public humiliation at the Palmer House that she knew would trigger Clause Nine, strip Arthur Sterling of his guards, his money, and histhree sons' protection, and leave Arthur completely alone and defenseless on the streets of Chicago today!
"Where is Dad right now?!" Damon barked, already reaching for his shoulder holster.
