Chapter 3

That night, all Sabrina could do was leave the keys to the company's Porsche as collateral.

Someone snapped a photo and dropped it into the college alumni group chat.

Sabrina claimed the bank had put a temporary limit on her card, and Owen backed up the lie. He even posted a long message accusing me of throwing a fit at my own birthday dinner on purpose, humiliating them.

I didn't respond. I went straight back to the Sanchez house for my documents and the old pocket watch my father had left me.

I pushed open the master bedroom door and found the mattress already swapped out for the one Sabrina had sent over.

My clothes had been shoved into a few black garbage bags, piled in the corner of the balcony.

Our wedding photo lay on top, the glass in the frame cracked, the crack running right across my face in the picture.

I turned and went to the study for the watch.

When I slid the bookcase aside, I noticed a floorboard had lifted.

I pried the board up. Underneath was hidden a rusted tin box.

On top sat a stack of remittance receipts.

The recipient's name was Gay Swanson. Five thousand a month, wired for five years straight.

Back then I'd asked for no bride price. To marry Owen, who had nothing to his name, I cut ties with my own father.

It wasn't until a year into the marriage that he knelt down and told me he'd been married before, and that he had three-year-old boy-and-girl twins.

He said his ex-wife had died of illness, that there was no one to look after the children, and he begged me not to send them away.

My heart ached for two motherless children. I bathed them, walked them to school, sat up through the night at their bedsides.

Twenty-four years, and I never once used the word "stepmother" to wound them.

But the release papers in that box spelled it out plainly.

Gay Swanson had been sentenced to twenty years for fraud and child trafficking, and had been out for five years now.

She hadn't died at all.

At the bottom of the box was a group photo taken last year.

Owen, the two children, and Gay gathered around a birthday cake. On the back was written:

"The four of us, a family at last, together again."

My hands were shaking hard.

I kept digging and found a hospital courier envelope that had been opened and glued shut again.

The sender line held only a hospital name and the name of an ordinary inpatient. The delivery date was two days before my father died, and the person who signed for it was Joan.

The envelope was already empty.

Back then the Sanchez family didn't know my father was the founder of Prescott Group. They only thought he was an ordinary old man I'd been estranged from for years.

But even with nothing to his name, he was still my father.

What gave them the right to decide for me that I shouldn't see him one last time?

Beneath the envelope was pressed an appointment slip from Serenity Rehabilitation Center, a family-initiated committal assessment.

The patient was me. The emergency contact was Owen. The appointment was for tomorrow morning.

The front door was suddenly shoved open.

Owen charged in with the two children.

Terry grabbed a fistful of my collar.

"Call the bank right now and cancel the freeze! Transfer the five hundred thousand into Aunt Sabrina's company account. Not a cent short!"

I threw his hand off.

"Touch me one more time and I'll have the police teach you how to respect your elders."

In the scuffle, the group photo and the release papers dropped to the floor.

Owen went white and lunged to snatch them.

"Who told you to go through my things?"

I stepped on the photo, bent down, picked it up, and slid it into my coat.

"What, the dead suddenly come back to life and you're afraid I can't handle it?"

"Or is it that the four of you had your little reunion behind my back, and you were afraid your free nanny would get in the way?"

Owen panicked.

"Monica, let me explain. Gay did time. I didn't want the children to know they had a criminal for a mother. After she got out, I only gave her a little to live on."

I slammed the remittance receipts against his chest.

"You used our marital assets to keep your ex-wife, reunited with her behind my back, and then had the children drain the money I was saving to save my own life."

"Owen, it wasn't that you were afraid of hurting the children. You just decided I was easy to fool."

Joan raised her phone and started sobbing at me:

"Mom, you've been so paranoid lately. We only wanted to take you in for a checkup."

I snatched the phone away, deleted the secretly filmed video, and held the appointment slip up in front of Owen.

"You've even booked the committal assessment."

"You're not worried I'll lose my mind. You're hoping I do. Once I'm declared legally incompetent, my money and my shop are yours to control, aren't they?"

Owen looked away and didn't deny it.

I took the documents and the pocket watch, turned, and walked out.

Downstairs, a van marked with the Serenity Rehabilitation Center logo sat parked in the shadows. Someone inside was aiming a camera up at the Sanchez windows.

I photographed the plate and the appointment slip and sent the location to Alex.

"Contact legal and the police. Look into this rehabilitation center."

"Tomorrow morning, they may make their move on me at the breakfast shop."

Alex replied quickly:

"Chairwoman Prescott, this facility was reported two years ago for illegally detaining people against their will."

"Just go tomorrow. Leave the rest to us."