Chapter 2

On the drive home I kept my mouth shut, the new Cayenne humming under my hands.

The air in the car was heavy.

Yolanda sat in the passenger seat, sneaking glances at me. She peeled an orange, careful and quiet, and held a segment up to my lips.

"Honey, don't be upset. My dad's just like that. A lifetime of teaching turned him into a stiff old thing, way too high and mighty. But deep down he does approve of you. If he didn't, he never would've agreed to us getting married."

I bit into the orange and let out a bitter laugh. "Yol, do you think I really am kind of tacky?"

"Who says that!"

She fired back at once. "I love that you're tacky! What good are people who only know how to bury their heads in books? Can any of them do what you did, build a life with their own two hands, put me in a big house, give me a good life? And besides, in this world, without money you can't take a single step. My dad's thinking is straight out of the last century. Just ignore him."

Hearing my wife say that, a lot of that heaviness in my chest lifted.

But that's the thing about me. There's a stubborn streak buried deep.

The more Ethan Pruitt said I had no culture, the more he said I stank of money, the more I wanted to prove him wrong.

"No. I need to raise the cultural level of this house."

We got back to our new place, the one we'd just moved into, in the Royal Cove Estates, some of the priciest land in Sterling City.

I'd bought it as our wedding home, a flat over five thousand square feet, decorated to the hilt. European leather sofas, crystal chandeliers, marble floors, everything shouting I've got money.

But looking at it now, Ethan Pruitt wasn't entirely wrong.

The place did look a bit like a showroom for new money.

Especially that huge feature wall in the living room. We'd covered it in expensive imported wallpaper, and still it looked empty, missing some kind of soul.

"Babe, don't you think our wall here is missing something?" I pointed at it.

Yolanda took a look. "It is a little bare. How about we hang up our wedding photos?"

"Too tacky." I shook my head. "Since your dad says I've got no culture, let's put up something with culture. What about a piece of calligraphy or a painting? Ideally the kind that looks really old, with real depth to it. An ink-wash landscape!"

Yolanda laughed. "You know how to pick paintings? Don't let someone cheat you."

"Please. My eye for people is spot on. How far off could I be reading a painting? Tomorrow I'll go dig one up at the antique market. Then when your dad comes over, he can see I've got artistic taste too!"

Back then, I was acting purely out of spite and a need to show off.

I knew nothing about paintings. I couldn't even tell one category of traditional ink painting from another.

All I knew was that I wanted an old piece to hang on the wall, ward off bad luck, and shut my father-in-law up while I was at it.

But it never once crossed my mind that this fit of spite would stir up all the chaos that came after.