Chapter 2 - The Five Sons of Sterling
Leading the vanguard was thirty-eight-year-old Noah Sterlingâsix-foot-four, broad-shouldered, wearing a charcoal wool tactical coat over a tailored black suit. Noah, former Delta Force commander, now director of an international private maritime defense firm, walked with an unhurried, terrifying lethality. His cold gray eyes swept the room once, passing over the sixty guests as if they were cardboard cutouts, before locking onto the red welts encircling my wrists.
A single muscle in Noah's jaw twitched.
Behind him strode thirty-six-year-old Leo Sterling, sovereign owner of Sterling Transatlantic Logistics, commanding eighty deepwater container ships. Beside Leo walked thirty-four-year-old Julian Sterling, senior partner at Sterling & Croft, the most feared corporate litigation firm on the eastern seaboard. Flanking them were thirty-two-year-old Marcus Sterling, senior forensic compliance investigator, and thirty-year-old Caleb Sterling, director of sovereign cyber-intelligence.
They did not raise their voices. They did not draw weapons.
They moved with the iron discipline of five brothers who had built an unassailable financial and operational fortress, standing together in an unbroken line of bone and steel.
Noah walked down the center aisle of the ballroom, his heavy leather boots clicking rhythmically against the Carrara marble.
STEP. STEP. STEP.
He stopped two feet from Isaac Vance.
Noah looked down at my husband. At six-foot-four, he towered half a foot over Isaac, casting a shadow that swallowed the man completely.
Isaacâs arrogant posture faltered. The color drained from his cheeks in a sickening, grayish wave. His fingers began to tremble around the leather handle of the riding crop.
"Noah..." Isaac stammered, his voice pitching into a high, defensive register. "Listen to me. This was a private domestic disagreement. Your sister disrespected my family, she destroyed Cloverâs designer gown, and she needed to be reminded of her obligationsâ"
Noah didn't speak.
His left hand shot out like an iron vice, his fingers closing around Isaac's throat with bone-cracking torque:
CRUNCH.
Isaac let out a strangled, wheezing gasp, his eyes bulging from their sockets as Noah lifted him completely off his feet with a single arm, slamming his two-hundred-pound frame flat against the gilded wall.
The riding crop slipped from Isaacâs paralyzed fingers, clattering uselessly across the marble floorboards.
"You tied my sister to a ceiling beam, Isaac?" Noah asked softly.
His voice was dead-calm, carrying the sub-zero chill of a sniper lining up a cold-bore shot through an open window.
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Wendy Vance shrieked, dropping her glass into the champagne tower, sending crystal crashing to the floor: "Get your hands off my son! Security! Call the police! This is an armed invasion!"
Arthur Vance lunged forward, reaching for his smartphone: "I am Arthur Vance! I run this cityâs municipal infrastructure! You touch my boy again and I will have your trucking licenses revoked across the state!"
