Chapter 6 - THE MAN OUTSIDE THE WINDOWJulian moved before the rest of us understood what had happened.
He shoved the children behind the kitchen island and pulled me down with them.
Glass exploded across the floor.
Vivian screamed.
Conrad reached for his phone.
I wrapped my body around Harper and Miles while Declan began crying.
“Stay down!”
Julian crawled toward the wall beside the patio doors.
Another impact struck the window.
Not a gunshot.
A rock.
It landed on the kitchen floor wrapped in paper.
The figure outside ran.
Police arrived within minutes.
The paper contained an address.
Nothing else.
A small house outside Evanston.
Detectives told us not to go.
Julian agreed.
Then waited until they left.
I stared at him.
“You’re going.”
“Yes.”
“I knew it.”
“You’re not.”
“I knew you’d say that too.”
“Elena, someone just threw a rock through your kitchen window.”
“Exactly. My kitchen.”
Conrad interrupted.
“I’ll go.”
Both of us said, “No.”
He looked offended.
In the end, we did something surprisingly responsible.
We gave the address to investigators.
Then we waited.
Three hours later, Detective Marisol Vega returned.
“There’s someone at the house.”
“Graham Pike?”
“No.”
She looked at Vivian.
“A woman.”
“Who?”
“Catherine Sterling.”
Julian stopped breathing.
His sister had been living twenty minutes away from me.
For almost a year.
Under another name.
She agreed to meet Julian but requested neutral ground.
We gathered at a police interview room that evening.
When Catherine entered, I almost didn’t recognize her.
The glossy woman I remembered had disappeared.
Her hair was shorter.
No makeup.
Thin.
Exhausted.
Julian stood.
“Cat.”
She broke.
She crossed the room and collapsed into his arms.
For several minutes neither spoke.
Then Catherine saw me.
“I’m sorry.”
The Sterling family apparently owed me enough apologies to fill a stadium.
She sat.
Her story completed pieces we didn’t know existed.
Daniel Pike had been charming when they met.
By the time Catherine discovered he was moving money through her foundation credentials, they were married.
He threatened to implicate her.
Then threatened Julian.
Then me.
Arthur found out.
He tried to protect everyone.
Graham Pike, Daniel’s father, helped cover the theft because he believed exposing Daniel would destroy his son.
After Arthur died, Catherine learned she was pregnant.
Daniel became worse.
Violent.
Controlling.
She fled.
Conrad helped hide her.
Vivian knew Catherine disappeared but not where.
“Why didn’t you call me?” Julian asked.
“Because Daniel told me you knew everything.”
Julian closed his eyes.
Another forged reality.
Another sibling separated by lies.
“What happened to your baby?”
Catherine looked down.
“A girl.”
Vivian covered her mouth.
“Her name is Sophie.”
“Where is she?” I asked gently.
“With people I trust.”
“Is Daniel her father?”
Catherine shook her head.
“No.”
Everyone stared.
She looked toward Conrad.
Then away.
“My marriage to Daniel was already over privately. I was trying to leave. Sophie’s father was someone else.”
Julian leaned forward.
“Who?”
Catherine whispered a name.
“Andrew Levin.”
Mara Levin’s son.
That explained why Arthur trusted Mara.
Andrew had died of cancer three years earlier.
Catherine disappeared partly to protect Sophie from Daniel.
After Daniel’s fatal car accident, she remained hidden because Graham became obsessed with finding his granddaughter.
Not out of love.
Sophie had inherited shares through Andrew.
Daniel had known.
If he controlled Catherine and Sophie, he could access multiple family trusts.
“Graham believes I have documents proving Daniel’s theft,” Catherine said.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
She looked at me.
“Elena has them.”
I laughed from sheer disbelief.
“Excuse me?”
“Not knowingly.”
Five years earlier, weeks before my divorce, Catherine had given me a wedding gift she claimed she had forgotten to deliver.
A large framed watercolor of Central Park.
It had followed me from New York to Chicago.
It was hanging in my upstairs hallway.
I stared at her.
“You hid documents inside my painting?”
“Yes.”
“You people have serious communication problems.”
Even Julian laughed at that.
We returned home with police.
The watercolor came off the wall.
Behind the backing board sat a slim memory card.
On it were financial records.
Transfers.
Emails.
Audio files.
Enough to prove Daniel Pike stole nearly forty-three million dollars.
Enough to prove Graham Pike helped him conceal it.
And enough to prove Arthur Sterling intended to report both of them the morning after his death.
There was one more file.
An audio recording.
Daniel speaking to Graham.
“If Arthur won’t stop, scare him.”
Graham answered.
“He’s old. Be careful.”
“I don’t care how you do it.”
No explicit murder order.
But chilling enough.
Another recording dated the night Arthur died captured Graham discussing medication.
Julian’s face turned gray.
Police took everything.
By morning, Graham Pike had a warrant attached to his name.
Yet he had vanished.
For the first time, Julian insisted on professional security.
This time, I agreed.
The children’s lives remained remarkably normal through all this.
Children have an extraordinary talent for demanding peanut butter sandwiches during family catastrophes.
Julian became part of the routine.
He learned that Harper required exactly seven minutes of cuddling after nightmares.
Declan hated peas but would eat broccoli voluntarily.
Miles could identify Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus but routinely forgot where he left his shoes.
I watched him fall in love with them.
Not abstractly.
Specifically.
Messily.
He didn’t love “having heirs.”
He loved Declan’s ridiculous jokes.
Harper’s dramatic sigh.
Miles’s quiet curiosity.
That mattered.
One Saturday morning, I found Julian on the living-room floor assembling a wooden train set.
“Your board meeting starts in twenty minutes.”
“I canceled it.”
“You canceled a Sterling Capital board meeting?”
“Rescheduled.”
“For trains?”
“For my children.”
The way he said it made my throat tighten.
“You can’t abandon your entire life.”
“I’m not.”
He stood.
“I’m finally figuring out which part is actually mine.”
Our eyes met.
There was too much history between us.
Too much damage.
And still something living underneath it.
Julian felt it too.
He stepped closer.
“Elena…”
I moved away.
“Don’t.”
He stopped instantly.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know what this is.”
“Neither do I.”
“I spent five years hating you.”
“I know.”
“And now I find out half the reasons were lies.”
“Not all.”
That surprised me.
He continued.
“I still failed you before my mother interfered.”
“Julian—”
“I shut you out after my father died. I became angry. Defensive. I let work swallow me. When you accused me of cheating, I cared more about being offended that you didn’t believe me than understanding why you were afraid.”
He looked down.
“My mother created the lie. But she found cracks we made.”
That was painfully true.
I had expected him to use Vivian as an excuse.
Instead, he accepted the part that belonged to him.
It made forgiveness more dangerous.
Because forgiveness suddenly seemed possible.
That night, after the children slept, we sat on the back steps.
The broken patio door had been replaced.
Two security guards stood discreetly out front.
Julian handed me a mug of tea.
“You still take honey?”
“You remember?”
“I remember almost everything about you.”
I looked away.
He added softly, “That has been the problem.”
We sat quietly.
Then my phone rang.
Detective Vega.
“We located Graham Pike’s vehicle.”
“Where?”
“Abandoned near O’Hare.”
“Did he leave the state?”
“We don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“Because we found something inside.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“A photograph of your children.”
I stood.
Julian’s expression changed instantly.
May you like
Detective Vega continued.
“And written across the back is tomorrow’s date.”
