Sylvester Pemberton Novels & Stories

"Please don't make this harder than it already is. At work, you're my boss. Outside of work, I'm engaged—or will be soon. That's reality. What happened between us was beautiful, but it was just one night. It has to stay that way." I walked past him toward the elevator, my heart shattering with every step. I expected him to follow, to argue, to try to stop me. But he didn't. And when I turned back, I found him standing by my desk, his expression carefully controlled but his eyes burning with an emotion I couldn't name. "For the record," he said quietly, "Richard Pemberton proposed to his assistant three years ago. When she got pregnant, he paid her to have an abortion and fired her. Then he m

Rebecca Pemberton was seventy-five years of age. She and her late husband had been the founders of the Pemberton Synergy, and till date, she was one of the most respected women in the country. She was always looking fit and didn't look like she'd be kicking the bucket soonest. She was graced with four children and six grandchildren. Rebecca was a very hard woman to please. Her own children rarely found favour in her sight. And despite the efforts her grandchildren put in, they could never seem to please her. Wilder had been the only lucky one.

Thought about Room 14. “When?” I said. “Soon,” she said. “Before winter properly arrives.” I nodded. We walked out of the station into the Cambridge afternoon. My phone buzzed, it was James. I answered. “I found something else,” James said. “In the 1987 correspondence.” A pause. “Gabriel the second trustee, the one I identified initially, a man named Arthur Pemberton.” A pause. “He’s still alive, he’s ninety-one. He lives in a care home outside Norwich.” He paused. “And he’s been asking about you.”

“He is formidable.” “I know who Pemberton is,” Sera said. “I have read every public judgment connected to his appearances. His strategy in major fraud cases is to make the evidentiary record seem so large and intricate that the jury loses confidence in its own ability to understand what they are being asked to decide.” She looked at Vivienne. “That is why Edmund’s documentation is the foundation of our support for the prosecution. It is a financial map built by a man who spent nineteen years making it comprehensible. The clarity is inside the documentation. Pemberton cannot manufacture confusion from a record specifically built to resist it.”

Eleanor was at the other end. The conversation moved the way dinner conversation moved in rooms like this — across several registers, no single thread sustained too long before it became the next one. Arthur Pemberton was, as Collins had predicted, pleasant — a man whose pleasantness was genuine and who had the additional quality of being genuinely interested in other people, which made him good company in the specific way that interested people always were. He asked about the consulting work with the authentic curiosity of someone who found the mechanics of business genuinely interesting rather than networking-interesting.

Everything went back to normal. Except for one major difference. Now everyone knew exactly who Maxwell Sterling was. Maxwell had barely sat back down at his table when the first person approached. "Mr. Sterling." A distinguished-looking man in his fifties walked over with an eager smile and extended hand. "Charles Pemberton the 3rd. I'm the CEO of Pemberton Pharmaceuticals. I just had to come over and introduce myself properly after that unfortunate incident." Maxwell stood up politely and shook his hand. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Pemberton."