Chapter 4

I threw it right back at her. "What wouldn't I dare?"

"My company has the best legal team there is, and this is exactly the kind of work they're best at."

Mona whipped out her phone and deleted the video.

"There, the video's gone now, all right? I was just so angry earlier, I wanted to vent online. How was I supposed to know it'd blow up like that?"

Marlin planted himself in front of Mona. "Enough. Your daughter-in-law already apologized. Stop blowing this out of proportion!"

"She didn't even say sorry. You call that an apology?"

"Sorry. Happy now?"

"No. You're going to post a video setting the record straight about everything that happened today, and you're going to get up on that stage and apologize to me properly!"

Mona knit her brows and gritted her teeth. "This is my wedding day. There is no way I'm getting up on a stage to apologize to you!"

"I already deleted the video. I'm not posting any correction. If I did, all those people online would come after me and rip me apart."

"They rip into you because you had it coming. Isn't that right?"

Marlin shoved me hard. "Florence, that's enough! Don't throw away decency when it's handed to you!"

"Grandpa, Grandma, get her under control. She thinks she can walk all over us!"

My mother pulled me aside and started coaxing me, all sweetness and reason.

"Florence, your son's thirty. It wasn't easy for him to find a wife at all. Quit while you're ahead and stop making a scene. What if you really push Mona too far and she wants a divorce?"

"Just hand your son the card and drop this whole apology business."

I glanced at my mother, then walked over to Mona.

"Mona, I'll ask you one more time. Are you posting the correction video or not? Are you apologizing or not?"

Mona didn't budge an inch. "Not posting, not apologizing!"

"Fine. Then wait for the letter from my lawyers."

A crack. Another slap landed across my face.

My father jabbed a finger at me. "You send your daughter-in-law a lawyer's letter, and every one of us cuts you off for good!"

Marlin watched me get hit, and he laughed.

"Serves you right!"

My father roared at me, "Give the card to your daughter-in-law!"

I didn't move.

So he just grabbed for it.

He wrenched the card out of my hand and pressed it into Mona's.

"Take it, granddaughter-in-law."

Mona wore a smug, taunting look, and my son had the exact same expression on his face.

My mother looked at me, shook her head, and sighed.

Then they turned around, put their smiles back on as if nothing had happened, and went off to toast the guests.

Philippa stood beside me, and she was crying.

"Florence, it's just not fair to you. It breaks my heart."

I drew in a deep breath, and suddenly I laughed.

"No, it really isn't fair."

I pulled out my phone and called the head of my legal department. "That video and those screenshots I sent you a moment ago, get them organized and file them straight with the court. I'm suing Mona Bryant for defamation!"

Then I called my assistant. "Get a crew out to my house right now and level the new mansion. Send more people. I want that place flattened before the sun goes down."

After that I called the bank and reported the card lost.

I hung up and let out a long breath.

"Florence, didn't you just finish building that mansion not long ago? You're going to tear it down?"

"That's right. Didn't my father say that the second I sued Mona, they'd cut me off for good?"

"Well, if we're cut off, then they don't get to live in the new house I paid for."

That mansion of ours was a five-story European-style house, and it came with a big yard too.

It was in a completely different class from your average house someone builds out in the country.

Back then my parents said the old family house was too shabby, and the match the matchmaker had lined up for my son wasn't interested.

I paid for a new house for them on the spot.

The whole reason was that my son's blind-date match, Mona, had said that if he had a European-style mansion like that, she'd marry him immediately.

I didn't say a word about it. I just wired over five million right away and built that mansion.

The whole family moved in overjoyed. They arranged every floor of that five-story house to suit themselves, and never left so much as a single bedroom for me.

Maybe that was the moment I should have seen this family for what they were.

I took out my phone and watched the livestream my assistant had started.

"Ms. Henson, we've started work, just like you ordered!"

I nodded. "Good. Nice work."

I watched the house crumble bit by bit under the excavator, while over there Mona and Marlin laughed themselves silly, none the wiser.

I waited until they'd seen off the last table of guests, finished the family dinner, and were getting ready to head home. Only then did I stand.

The car drove the whole way back, and when we got out, Mona was still radiant with delight.

Until she saw the new house, already flattened to the ground.

"Honey, am I seeing things? Where's our big mansion?!"