Chapter 181: Show Up Once, Smash Once
Asher Keating spoke slowly. "...You were with me, after all. I have several properties here in Riverfall. If there’s one you like, I can give it to you. Just consider it..."
"That won’t be necessary. Have you forgotten, President Keating? I’m a daughter of the Grant family now. I can afford any house you can buy. Let’s go, Sheila."
"Hmph! I’m writing up my resignation as soon as I get back! And you’d better approve it, President Keating!" Sheila Hughes snarled at Asher Keating.
Leah Sinclair paused before walking out but didn’t turn around. An imperceptible tremor laced her voice. "I have only one condition. You can give your little white lotus any property you want, but not Europa Gardens. If she dares show her face there even once, I’ll go and trash the place. Try me, Asher Keating, if you don’t believe me."
Without another word, Leah Sinclair left. Asher Keating watched her desolate figure walk away. A suffocating pressure built in his chest, and with no other way to release it, he viciously slammed the door.
Leah Sinclair had only come by to get the gifts for Sheila Hughes and Zion Sawyer that she’d left in her car the day before. When Edward Yates came down, Sheila Hughes had started sarcastically asking if Asher Keating had slept well last night.
A befuddled Edward Yates had mentioned that Asher didn’t seem well, hadn’t even eaten breakfast, and that Tiana Vaughn had brought him some porridge. Unable to restrain herself, Sheila Hughes had stormed up to the 68th floor.
Sean Yates heard the commotion and came out, but he couldn’t stop her in time. And that’s how she ended up seeing the scene of Asher Keating with his arms around Tiana Vaughn.
After leaving the Keating offices, Leah Sinclair went back to the house Mabel Grant had previously bought for her. She didn’t want to field questions from Nathan Grant and the others, nor did she want to be comforted by Sheila Hughes. All she wanted right now was to be alone.
Mabel Grant had bought this house for her some time ago. It was similar in size to her place in Europa Gardens. She had told Brandon Jacobs that morning she’d be staying here, and he had immediately sent people over to get it ready.
She didn’t dare tell Mabel Grant, who was still abroad. She was afraid that if she did, Mabel would demand to know every last detail and might even fly straight to Riverfall in a fury. Right now, Leah simply didn’t have the mental energy to deal with any of it.
Leah threw herself onto the bed, curling into a ball and biting her lip so hard it hurt. The scene from Asher Keating’s office flashed through her mind.
’Don’t blame him, Leah. You can’t blame him. He told you before you left. He couldn’t promise he wouldn’t fall for someone else during the years you were away.’
Leah repeated this to herself again and again, but her heart still ached so much she could barely breathe.
Last night, as Asher Keating held her, taking her again and again, he had whispered in her ear how much he missed her, so, so much.
’Hah. So it’s true. You can’t believe a single word a man says in bed.’
Tears began to fall, and Leah cried, muffled by the blankets, until she eventually drifted off to sleep without realizing it.
She began to have nightmares. In her dreams, Asher Keating appeared—sometimes gentle, sometimes icy, sometimes furious, sometimes his eyes filled with tender affection. But every image ultimately dissolved into a face with a hint of sorrow in its eyes. Leah was trapped in the dream, unable to wake.
"Asher..."
It was early evening when Leah was finally jolted awake by Sheila Hughes’s frantic pounding on her door. She sat up, drenched in sweat, and shook her head, feeling dizzy.
"Leah! Leah, are you in there? Don’t scare me like this!"
Leah managed to drag herself to the door and open it. Outside, Sheila Hughes and Ethan Shaw were standing with looks of sheer panic. If she hadn’t answered soon, Ethan was about to call the police.
"Leah! What happened to you?"
Sheila Hughes grabbed her arm, her voice trembling. Leah hadn’t been answering her phone, and there was no response at the door. Sheila had been terrified she might have been driven to do something foolish.
"It’s nothing. I think my blood sugar is just low. I was having a nightmare." Leah’s face was completely pale. Having not eaten anything, her blood sugar had indeed crashed.
Sheila quickly helped her inside and went straight to the refrigerator. Thankfully, it was well-stocked. Mabel Grant and Brandon Jacobs still treated Leah like a child, making sure to keep things like chocolate on hand.
She quickly unwrapped a bar of chocolate and had Leah eat a piece. Once Leah seemed a bit more stable, Sheila headed to the kitchen to make her some real food.
Ethan Shaw sat awkwardly on the sofa. After Leah had recovered a little, she looked over at him, and they shared a moment of silence. After a while, she went into another room and came back with the gift she had brought for him. She had retrieved her suitcase from Asher Keating’s villa that morning; she knew the security code.
Ethan accepted it with a conflicted look. ’This is so awkward,’ he thought. Privately, his loyalty was with Asher Keating, but he couldn’t deny that what Asher did was wrong. As a result, he had no idea how he was supposed to face Leah.
’He didn’t actually know much about the situation with Asher Keating and Tiana Vaughn. Asher had never brought Tiana up, so Ethan had no clue how the two of them even got involved.’
"Ethan," Leah said slowly, lighting a cigarette. "I want to know... Tiana Vaughn. How did she enter the picture?"
"Huh? Let me think... I think... was it the second semester of her freshman year, or first semester of her sophomore year? What happened was, Asher was out for a business dinner and ran into her. Her parents were yelling at her, telling her she couldn’t stay in school, that it was a waste of money."
"After that, Asher started paying for her tuition so she could finish her degree. When she graduated, he gave her a job at the company. I don’t know the specifics beyond that. Sean Yates would definitely know, though. Should I ask him?" Ethan recounted what he could remember, which wasn’t much.
"No, don’t. I was just asking." After that, Leah didn’t ask any more about Tiana Vaughn, nor did she mention Asher Keating again.
"By the way, how has the Sterling family been doing these past few years? I don’t think I saw Morgan Sterling at Nash’s wedding the other day."
"The Sterlings?"
Ethan Shaw sneered and lit a cigarette, his tone dripping with disdain. "Thomas Sterling has been completely bedridden for two years. Morgan Sterling claims he’s gone abroad to find a kidney donor for him. Tch. We all secretly think he’s just off enjoying some peace and quiet. In any case, the entire Sterling family is in his hands now."
He then slowly recounted the Sterling family’s situation over the past two years for Leah.
About a year after Leah went abroad, Thomas Sterling became paralyzed and bedridden. He’d always been an incredibly petty man, refusing to hand over power to Morgan Sterling, granting him only about a third of the control over the family business.
But Morgan had long used that one-third to slowly infiltrate the other two-thirds that his father controlled. He deliberately dragged his feet on finding a kidney donor for Thomas, while simultaneously spending just enough money to keep the old man from actually dying. By the time Thomas Sterling realized what was happening, it was already too late.
Ethan didn’t know the exact details of what transpired, but he’d heard that after an incident where Thomas Sterling vomited blood, he was left completely paralyzed.
And yet, Morgan Sterling kept him hanging on by a thread, all while publicly proclaiming that he would find a matching kidney donor for his father, no matter the cost.
The world saw Morgan Sterling as a model of filial piety, a son who had even neglected his business to care for his father, allowing Asher Keating to snatch up so much of the market in Riverfall.
But Ethan and his friends had noticed that ever since Thomas Sterling’s paralysis, Morgan had allowed no one to see either him or Jacqueline Vaughn. Sometimes, they even wondered if Thomas Sterling was already dead.