Chapter 1

After the wedding, I was the one holding up the entire Fox family on my million-a-year salary.

I handed over three hundred thousand to build my in-laws a three-story house. I pulled strings to land my brother-in-law a job everyone envied. Even my sister-in-law's two-hundred-thousand dowry went on my card.

Then my mother was rushed into the ICU with acute heart failure. Eight hundred thousand for surgery, and the clock was screaming. I went to withdraw the million in savings from our joint account, and found the card empty.

Eyes red, I demanded an answer from my husband, Piers Fox. He said it as if it were nothing. "I used it to open a salon for my foster sister!"

My mother-in-law sneered and said a woman her age wouldn't be any great loss if she died, so I should stop throwing money away.

What chilled me even more was this: the asthma medication I'd been taking for three years had been secretly swapped for vitamins.

1

At the bank ATM near the hospital, I inserted the joint card and checked the balance.

Looking at the number on the screen, my scalp went numb and my heart dropped.

Three hundred twenty-seven dollars and fifty-six cents?!

Fingers trembling, I opened the transaction history. A week ago, the full million had been transferred out all at once. The name on the receiving account: Lauren Dickerson.

I knew that name. She was the "foster sister" Piers was always mentioning. She'd suddenly gotten back in touch with him six months ago, saying she wanted to come to the city and make something of herself, and Piers had already brought up wanting to give her a hand.

Shaking, I called Piers, but the call wouldn't go through.

Clutching the card, I hailed a cab straight home.

When I pushed the door open, my mother-in-law, Deborah Chavez, was sitting on the couch cracking party mix nuts, spitting shells all over the floor.

She saw me come in and said in that mocking tone of hers, "Well, well. So you finally deigned to come back?"

"I thought you were going to sit at your mother's bedside for the rest of your life!"

"There's no breakfast made in this house. You trying to starve us?"

I ground my teeth and demanded, "Where's Piers?"

Deborah's voice went sour. "Where else? Catching up on sleep in the bedroom!"

"He was up half the night playing cards with a client. He's worn out. A man out entertaining is taking care of real business. You're not even home to look after him. Not one bit of sense in you!"

"I heard about your mother's condition. Almost sixty years old, and you want to blow eight hundred thousand on surgery? Pure waste. In the end you'll lose the money and the person both."

Furious, I said, "Do you even know your son transferred the million out of my card?"

"He gave the money to that Lauren Dickerson—"

Before I could finish, she planted her hands on her hips and snapped at me. "You married my son, so your money is my son's money!"

"Let me tell you something, Lorraine Donaldson. You've been married into the Fox family for three years and there's not been a peep out of your belly. We haven't thrown you out yet, and that's us being generous! So what if he spends a little of your money?"

"Besides, Piers took that money for real business. Worth a lot more than saving your mother, that half-dead deadweight!"

The bedroom door opened. Piers, face full of displeasure, said, "What's this fit you're throwing first thing in the morning?"

"Lauren's a young girl out here trying to make it on her own. It isn't easy. So what if I helped her out?"

"We're all family. Do you really have to be this petty?"

I said coldly, "You people claim Lauren Dickerson as 'family.' I don't."

"My mother is lying in the ICU right now waiting on that money to save her life. Get the money back, now!"

He tugged at the collar of his pajamas, irritated. "Lauren's salon just opened. All the money's sunk into it. There's nothing to pull out right now."

"Aren't you the one making a million a year? Go borrow some from your coworkers, your friends. You're the one everybody likes."

I was about to blow up. "You take my money to open a salon for an outsider, and I'm the one who has to go borrow?"

He stuck his neck out stubbornly. "What outsider? She's my foster sister! Back when I was in college, she helped me out!"

"Anyway, it's not even certain your mother will make it off the operating table. Don't spend the money just to lose her too, wasting eight hundred thousand for nothing."

Deborah, beside him, jumped right in. "If you ask me, conservative treatment is enough. Let her live out however many days she's got left. Stop wasting our family's money."

I looked at the two of them, mother and son, and felt cold all over. Three years of feeling for these people, and it was nothing but a joke.

I didn't argue with them anymore. I turned, grabbed my bag, and walked out.

Downstairs at the front of the complex, I called my best friend, Eleanor Pruitt. I'd barely gotten out the words "My mom's in the ICU" before the tears broke loose.

Eleanor came straight over with money and went with me to the hospital to pay.

When she'd heard the whole thing, she was so angry she stamped her foot. "I told you back then he was a social climber with too much on his mind, and you wouldn't listen!"

"Well, now look. He'll even touch your mother's life-saving money. What are you still doing living with a man like that?"

I sat on the bench outside the ICU and murmured, "I always thought he was just family-minded, that he wasn't a bad person at heart."

"Now I finally understand. In his heart, my mother and I were always outsiders."

Toward evening, the doctor said the surgery was set for early the next morning, and the success rate was very high.

I let out a breath. In my heart, the decision was already made.

This marriage was over!

But before the divorce, everything they owed me, I was going to take back.