I answered it in the hallway.
“Arthur,” Thomas said, panic in his voice. “Someone recorded you in Central Park. The video is everywhere. And your mother just issued a press release without our permission, claiming Madeline is a mentally unstable opportunist attempting to extort the Sterling family.”
“She did what?” I hissed into the phone, my blood boiling.
“Eleanor went rogue,” Thomas explained hurriedly. “She’s trying to protect the company’s stock price. She told the press Madeline manipulated you and that the family is seeking an emergency court order to remove the children from her care.”
I shattered the plastic coffee cup in my hand. My mother had just declared war on the woman I was desperately trying to save.
I walked back into the hospital room. Madeline was staring at her phone, her face pale. She had seen the news.
“Madeline—” I started.
“Get out,” she said, her voice shaking with a terrifying, quiet rage. “You promised me no lawyers. You promised me you wouldn’t take them.”
“It wasn’t me! It was my mother. I will fix this.”
“Leave, Arthur. Before I take them and disappear where your money can never find us.”
I stepped back, holding my hands up. “I’m going. But watch the news in exactly one hour.”
I didn’t take a car. I ran the six blocks to the Sterling Development corporate headquarters. The lobby was swarming with reporters. Flashbulbs blinded me as my security team tried to usher me into the private elevator.
“Let them in,” I ordered my head of security. “Set up the podium in the atrium. Now.”
Ten minutes later, I stood before a sea of microphones. I wore no tie, my suit was wrinkled, and I lacked the polished, arrogant smile the media was used to.
“My name is Arthur Sterling,” I began, my voice echoing off the marble walls. “The woman being targeted by the press today is Madeline Hayes. She is the mother of my three sons. She is not an opportunist. She is a woman who survived unimaginable hardship because the people inside my own company, including my own mother, actively conspired to hide her existence from me.”
The room erupted into gasps.
