Chapter 10 - The Reckoning of Derek and Kenneth
Three weeks after the eviction, the cold reality of the civilian world closed in around Derek Sterling like a vice.
Confined to a dingy, eight-hundred-dollar-a-month motel room beside Interstate 40 under the strict conditions of his ankle monitor, Derek sat on the edge of a stained mattress, eating cold beans from a can.
His luxury sports car had been repossessed by the bank forty-eight hours after the asset freeze. His so-called fraternity brothers and country club associates had blocked his number, terrified of being pulled into the federal wire-fraud investigation. Every time he opened his laptop, he was met with thousands of messages from strangers across the globe mocking his cowardice and branding him a leech.
The motel room door rattled with three sharp knocks.
Derek leaped up, his heart leaping into his throat. "Dad? Is that you? Did you get the cash?"
He pulled the door open.
Standing on the cracked concrete walkway was not Kenneth Sterling. It was Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Jenkins, flanked by two armed FBI special agents in dark windbreakers.
"Derek Sterling?" Jenkins asked, showing her identification.
"I—I'm complying with my bond!" Derek stammered, backing into the room with his hands up. "The monitor is charged! I haven't left the perimeter!"
"We’re not here about your bond, Derek," Jenkins said, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation while the agents secured the doorway. "We’re here to offer you a choice."
Jenkins dropped a thick document onto the laminate desk beside the half-eaten beans.
"Your mother’s defense team is preparing to file an affirmative defense motion tomorrow morning. Do you know what her legal strategy is?"
Derek blinked, shaking his head numbly. "No... she hasn't called me from the jail..."
"Linda is claiming that *you* orchestrated the attack," Jenkins said, her voice dripping with clinical cruelty. "She has signed a sworn affidavit claiming that you gave her the steel chair, that you pressured her to confront Maya on stage, and that you manipulated her into draining the trust accounts because you owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to illegal bookmakers."
Derek’s vision went black around the edges. "What?! No! That's a lie! She’s the one who found the trust documents! She told me Maya was dead weight! She told me—"
"We know what she told you, Derek," Jenkins interrupted coldly. "We have the wiretaps. We have the text logs. But in the eyes of a federal jury, you are an adult who knowingly laundered stolen funds through third-party shell companies. Without a cooperation agreement, you are looking at a minimum sentencing guideline of fourteen years in federal prison."
Jenkins pulled out a fountain pen, laying it gently beside the paperwork.
"However... if you turn state’s evidence against your mother right now; if you provide sworn, unvarnished testimony regarding every financial forgery, every conversation, and every single act of fraud she committed between 2008 and today... the government will recommend a reduced sentence of eighteen months at a minimum-security facility."
Derek looked at the pen. His hands shook so violently he could barely hold his fingers straight.
For twenty-four years, Linda had coddled him, spoiled him, and turned him into an entitled monster by telling him that the world owed him everything and that Maya was nothing.
And now, the moment the ship was sinking, his mother had thrown him into the water to use as a raft.
Derek picked up the pen, a ragged, bitter sob tearing from his chest.
"Where... where do I sign?"
Meanwhile, sixty miles away in a rundown trailer park on the outskirts of Fayetteville, Kenneth Sterling sat on a rusted lawn chair, staring at an eviction notice taped to his screen door.
He had no money left to pay the weekly trailer rent. His former corporate partners had scrubbed his name from the company masthead and filed a civil indemnity suit against him for twenty million dollars. The local diner in town had refused to serve him breakfast that morning after the waitress recognized his face from the viral news clips.
"We don't serve cowards who let their daughters get beaten," she had told him, dumping his coffee into the sink.
Kenneth pulled out an old, cracked flip phone. With trembling fingers, he dialed the base hospital number, asking for the surgical recovery wing.
"Captain Sterling's office," a calm, professional voice answered.
"Maya?" Kenneth cried out, his voice breaking into hysterical wailing. "Maya, please! It's your father! I'm sleeping in my car! I don't have food! Maya, I gave you life! You can't abandon me like this! You have the house! You have the money! Just give me enough to survive! Maya, please!"
A brief pause hung on the line. Then, the cold, steady voice of General Robert Hayes came through the speaker.
"Mr. Sterling."
Kenneth froze, the phone slipping slightly against his greasy ear. "General... where is my daughter?"
"Captain Sterling is currently commanding her logistics battalion on the firing range, Mr. Sterling," Hayes said, every word hitting like a lead weight. "She doesn't hear you. She will never hear you again."
"General, I’m an old man! I have nothing!"
"You have exactly what you built with your own hands, Kenneth," Hayes replied. "You sowed cowardice for twenty years. Now... enjoy your harvest."
*Click.*
May you like
The line went dead, leaving Kenneth alone in the falling rain, listening to the hollow hum of the empty highway.
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