THE SHATTERED PEARLS OF THE STERLING DYNASTY

Julian stared at the envelope. His heart hammered against his ribs.

Eleanor was dead. Thomas had confirmed it. So how did a letter from her end up on the desk inside their father’s locked, highly secure study?

Unless Thomas was wrong.

A loud crash echoed from the hallway outside, followed by the heavy thud of footsteps approaching the study door. Thomas was coming.

Julian quickly shoved the envelope into his jacket pocket. He pushed Lily gently into the panic room. "Stay quiet, Lily. Do not come out until I say it's safe."

He sealed the steel door just as the handle of the study door violently jiggled.

"Julian!" Thomas's voice was muffled through the heavy mahogany. "Don't be a fool! Richard is down. It's just you and me now. Hand over the girl and the drives, and I'll let you walk away."

Julian’s blood ran cold. Richard is down. The thought of his formidable father bleeding in the foyer fueled a sudden, reckless rage.

He looked around the study for a weapon. His eyes landed on a heavy brass fire poker resting near the hearth. He grabbed it, gripping it tight.

"I'm not handing her over, Thomas!" Julian yelled back, standing beside the door. "And the police are already on their way!"

"A bluff," Thomas sneered from the other side. "I jammed the signal jammers myself."

Suddenly, the lock on the study door blasted inward. Thomas had shot the mechanism. The door kicked open, and Thomas stepped in, sweeping the room with his silenced pistol.

Julian swung the heavy brass poker from his blind spot. It struck Thomas’s gun hand with a sickening crunch. The pistol flew across the room, sliding beneath the leather sofa.

Thomas howled in pain, grasping his shattered wrist. But the older man was desperate. He lunged at Julian, tackling him into the heavy bookshelves. Books rained down on them as they wrestled for control.

"You don't understand!" Thomas spat, his hands clawing at Julian's throat. "She was going to ruin us! The scandal! The embezzlement! I did it for the Sterling name!"

Julian drove his knee into Thomas’s stomach, throwing the older man off him. "You did it for your own greed!"

Julian scrambled to his feet, breathing heavily. Thomas lay on the Persian rug, gasping for air, totally defeated.

Julian grabbed the silk cord from the curtains and bound Thomas’s wrists tightly behind his back. He ripped the cheap, woven bracelet off Thomas’s wrist and shoved it into his pocket.

Without wasting another second, Julian bolted out of the study and ran back to the foyer.

What he saw made his chest tight.

Richard Sterling was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, his white shirt stained with blood from a graze wound on his shoulder. But standing over him, pressing a clean cloth to the wound, was someone Julian never expected to see.

A woman in a worn, oversized trench coat. Her dark, curly hair was messy, and she looked exhausted, thin, and battered.

Julian froze. The breath completely left his lungs.