Chapter 3

Something in me snapped, and I rushed into the study.

“Dad, this is too far!”

My mother was sitting on the floor, her face wet with tears, her hair a mess.

The mother who had always been so elegant, so composed, was so wretched I barely recognized her.

“Paula,” she looked up at me, “Mom is going to get a divorce. Will you come with me?”

I looked at her swollen, weeping eyes, and I nodded.

But that day never came.

Kathy embezzled five hundred thousand during her internship.

When the police knocked on our door, every piece of evidence pointed at my mother. She was sentenced to eight full years.

The moment the verdict came down, her eyes were flooded with a sorrow that would not lift.

“Paula, I'm sorry. I won't be able to take care of you anymore. You have to take good care of yourself.”

I cried so hard I couldn't speak.

I ran to Bryce, wanting him to help me.

I pushed open the door to his apartment, and Kathy was tangled up on the bed with him, both of them half undressed.

My eyes went red, and I grabbed the vase beside me and hurled it at Kathy.

Bryce stepped in front of her.

The vase shattered across the floor.

“Paula Pruitt! You've always been this spoiled and willful!” he shouted at me. “Kathy is a hundred times gentler and kinder than you!”

I lunged at them like a madwoman, and Bryce threw me out the door.

“Kathy told me everything. Living in your house on your family's charity, bullied by you, having it hard the whole time.”

“From now on, let's just pretend we never knew each other.”

Kathy poked her head out, looking all pitiful.

“Sis, don't blame Bryce. He's a good person. He saw how pathetic I was and wanted to comfort me, and we didn't mean for it to……”

Rage blurred my vision, and the words came out of me raw.

“Kathy, you filthy little slut! Just as cheap as that short-lived mother of yours! You took the money and made my mom take the fall. You'll get what's coming to you!”

Bryce raised his hand and slapped me hard across the face.

“Enough! You crazy woman!”

My ear rang and rang and wouldn't stop.

That one slap left my right ear all but deaf.

From that day on, my world came apart.

To clear my mother's name, I went to my father's company again and again to raise hell.

Every time, security dragged me out and a police car hauled me away.

The people at the station all knew me now.

“Miss Pruitt, your mother has already begun serving her sentence. You have to face reality. You can't keep acting out like this, causing trouble over and over.”

“Making a scene like this again and again is a real disturbance to public order.”

I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

I went to Bryce's law firm too, clutching the love letters he'd once written me.

Kathy saw them, and with pity all over her face, she threw the letters into the bathroom trash.

Security shoved me to the ground.

“Get out! Our Mr. Henson is about to hold his wedding with his fiancée. Cause any more trouble and see if we don't have you rotting in a cell!”

I sat on the ground and cried until everything went blurry.

That was when a car with no license plate came rushing at me.

Maybe I just didn't hear the horn. Maybe the car did it on purpose.

The wheels rolled hard over my fingers.

The pain knocked me out cold on the spot.

When I woke up, both hands were shattered beyond repair. I would never play the piano again.

I had to give up the world tour contract I'd signed, and paid a staggering penalty for breaking it.

In the span of a single month.

Family, love, career, all of it gone.

I said all this in a very calm voice, as if I were telling someone else's story.

“After my hands were ruined, I went to apply at other companies. No one dared hire me. They were all afraid of crossing my father.”

“Only you, Fran. You were the only one willing to take me in.”

I gave a small, faint laugh.

“The truth is, that day I'd already decided to go jump in the river. I happened to pass your place and thought I'd try one last time, ask if you were hiring.”

“You kept me, so I didn't manage to die.”

Fran's eyes went red.

“These people will get what's coming to them.”

I stood up and brushed off my pants.

“Shift's over. I'm heading out.”

Back at my little rental, someone was standing at the door.

Cigarette butts littered the ground.

I frowned and looked over.

“Paula, let's talk.”