Chapter 3

Once the refund went through, Stanley's payment status flipped to unpaid.

Nine days left before the enrollment deadline.

At noon, he walked into the salon carrying a fruit basket.

"Sis, I came to apologize."

He pulled out a handwritten promise.

It said that once he graduated, he'd earn three hundred thousand a year and buy me a house for my old age, guaranteed.

I laid two agreements on the table in front of him.

One was a loan agreement.

The other was a conditional-funding and repayment agreement.

"I pay the tuition, you pay it back monthly."

"If you don't after you graduate, I take you to court."

Stanley flipped through two pages, then tossed the pen back on the table.

"Sis, you're guarding yourself against your own brother now?"

"You run the numbers like this, and we're still supposed to be family?"

I opened my phone.

"Then we're not."

Trudy sat off to the side, her eyes going red again.

"My parents never once made me sign something like this."

"Then let your parents pay your tuition."

She shut up.

That afternoon, my mother came in with Aunt Marlene and Uncle Dwayne.

Marlene pointed at the salon's register system.

"These three salons were built with the Fox family's money. They have to be transferred to Stanley."

I set the business licenses on the table.

"The registered owner is me."

"The startup money came from my wages and a business loan."

Dwayne kicked over a display rack.

"Without your mother giving birth to you, you think you'd have any of this?"

"Every cent you earn, half of it belongs to Stanley."

The rack crashed to the floor, and a dozen bottles of polish rolled loose across the tiles.

Customers got up and left.

I picked up my phone and called the police.

My mother lunged at me for it.

"You'd have the police haul off your own mother?"

I pulled my hand out of her reach.

"Who wrecked the place? The cameras will say."

When the officers arrived, I pulled up the footage and the damage list.

Then I brought out thirteen years of bank records.

After I started at the factory at sixteen, I wired money home on the tenth of every month.

One point four seven million in all.

The only two names on the receiving end were Leonora James and Stanley Fox.

Marlene held up her phone and started filming me.

"Everybody look at this. This ungrateful little snake wants to report her own mother."

My mother dropped straight to her knees.

"I gave birth to an animal."

"She's got money for three salons, but she won't even cover her own brother's tuition."

The officers told her to get up, then logged the broken items.

"This is a place of business. Whoever damages it pays for it."

I sent notice to the landlord.

The little storefront my mother ran had always been leased under my name.

The lease ended next month, and I wasn't renewing.

Stanley's phone and laptop were still on installment plans tied to me, and I unlinked those too.

The bag Trudy had picked out hadn't shipped yet, so I canceled the order.

That night, a post went up on the local forum.

The title read: Coldhearted Salon Owner Calls Cops on Her Own Mother.

Marlene had uploaded the video of me calling the police.

At first the comments were all cursing me out.

Half an hour later, a neighbor posted ten years of transfer screenshots.

"She sent money home every single month."

"Her brother's tutoring, his phone, his laptop, she paid for all of it."

Another old coworker posted my pay stub from when I started at the factory at sixteen.

The comments started to turn.

"Took over a million and still went to trash her salon? That's a mother?"

"So the big sister raises a little emperor, and now she's supposed to buy a house for the little emperor's future mother-in-law too?"

I saved every screenshot.

Stanley sent a voice message.

"Sis, do you really have to drag the whole family through the mud?"

I sent him the damage list from the salon.

"Pay for it first."