Never Seen After

Chapter 2 The Severed Lifeline

(Julian's POV)

The house had gone quiet.

No one moved from room to room or waited for me to come home. I opened a window and decided this must be freedom.

Mia opened the rest of the windows. Then she started clearing Evelyn’s things from the study.

“We need to make this place ours, Julian.” She carried out beige folders, several hardbacks, and a row of unlabeled amber bottles. “Out with the old.”

She dropped everything into a black trash bag. I saw books and amber bottles. None of it looked important enough to ask about.

Mia put her arms around my neck and kissed my jaw. “I can finally be myself here. No more tiptoeing around Queen Evelyn.”

I pulled her close. Her perfume had already covered the smell of Evelyn’s cedar hand cream. Mia loved me. A baby was coming, and Cross Group was growing.

My name was on the company doors. Mia’s arms were around my neck. I did not look at the trash bag again.

(Evelyn's POV)

The elevator climbed sixty floors to my private penthouse in Sterling Tower. When the doors opened, I handed over my wet coat.

The staff had called me Mrs. Cross for three years. Now they greeted me as Miss Sterling.

Chloe waited beside the floor-to-ceiling windows with a tablet. The city lights ran beneath us, reflected in the black glass.

Far below the penthouse, traffic slipped between buildings my family owned, financed, or insured.

“The accounts are locked, Miss Sterling. The revocation went through immediately. Incoming IP royalties are being routed to our holding servers.”

In the dressing room, my old plain clothes had been boxed. Ivory, steel, and midnight-blue suits hung in their place.

At the Cross house, I had dressed so no one would remember what I wore. Here, I chose a cream silk blouse and a black blazer from the row waiting for me.

“What about the nine-figure UBS bridge loan to Cross Group?” I fastened the diamond clasp at my wrist.

Chloe checked the time on her tablet. “Frozen ten minutes ago. Their Swiss bankers have called four times.”

“Send the calls to legal.” I straightened one cuff in the mirror. “What’s next?”

(Julian's POV)

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN, ‘FROZEN’?”

Peterson, my Chief Financial Officer, gripped his tablet in both hands.

“The notification came from Zurich an hour ago, sir. The loan has been suspended indefinitely.”

“On what grounds? Did you send the updated valuation? Our projections are through the roof. The company guarantees that loan!”

I hit the mahogany desk hard enough to move Peterson’s tablet.

“I sent it. They said the guarantee is the problem.”

“What problem?”

Peterson turned the tablet toward me. The updated valuation and quarterly projections were attached beneath the bank’s reply. One sentence in that reply had been highlighted.

“It says the ‘implicit credit guarantee has been withdrawn.’”

I read it twice. “Implicit guarantee? I didn’t use a guarantor.”

Peterson scrolled to the final sentence and read it aloud.

“‘As of 21:00 GMT, the authority of the listed guarantor, E. Sterling, has been permanently revoked.’”