one, I was twenty-two. I recalled standing in the velvet-lined drawing room of the Sterling ancestral estate in Oakridge. My hands had been shaking so violently I had to press them against my thighs. My sister, Harper Sterling—three years older and absolutely drowning in a toxic cocktail of inherited vanity and narcissism—sat beside Mother on a silk sofa. Harper idly turned pages in a leather portfolio.
TrackPregnancy
The folder held financial statements, a redacted medical file, and carefully retouched portraits of a sixty-four-year-old international shipping magnate. Three of his wives