Chapter 5

The night before we were supposed to sign, I opened my banking app on impulse, just to check the balance.

The moment the page loaded, my heart skipped.

There was only a little over a thousand dollars left in the account.

I thought I'd misread it, so I logged out and back in.

Still a little over a thousand.

I pulled up the transaction history and found that the forty-two million had been transferred out three days earlier.

Into an account I didn't recognize.

I ran out of my room with the phone in my hand.

"Mom!"

She was in the living room watching TV. Nicholas was there too, sprawled on the couch playing on his phone.

At my shout, both of them looked up.

"What is it?" My mother's expression was perfectly calm.

I shoved the phone screen in her face. "Where's the money? The money in the account?"

She glanced at it, no surprise on her face at all.

"Spent."

"Spent?" My voice went shrill. "Forty-two million, spent? On what?"

"Bought your brother a house."

I froze where I stood, certain for a second I'd heard wrong.

"Bought Nicholas… a house?"

"That's right." She stood up and brushed at dust that wasn't there on her pants. "That townhouse, I already bought it. Just not in your name. In your brother's."

She said it like she had every right, like she was remarking on the weather.

"That was my money!" My voice was already shaking. "What gives you the right?"

"What's yours, what's mine? You're part of this family. Your money is the family's money, isn't it?"

"No! That's my money! Money I earned!"

"A girl like you, what's the point of earning that much?" Her voice rose too. "You're going to get married someday, and once you're married you belong to some other family. Your brother's different. He carries the Acevedo name. He's the root of this family!"

"I won't get married, and it's still my money!"

"Won't get married? Then you're just an old maid!" She slapped the coffee table. "Let me tell you something, Sharon. You owe your brother. Every dollar you spent growing up, every meal you ate, every piece of clothing you wore, which of it didn't come from this family? Now that you've made something of yourself, you should pay this family back!"

Her words left me shaking all over.

"Have I ever spent a single dollar of yours?" My voice trembled. "From grade school to college, it was all scholarships. My studies abroad, all funded. I never asked you for a cent!"

"And the food you ate? The roof over your head?" She sneered. "You think those were free?"

I froze, unable to speak for a long moment.

So this was her logic.

I ate this family's food for twenty years, so I owed her.

Those meals. The cold ones, the leftovers, the food Nicholas didn't finish. In her eyes, those were a kindness.

A kindness I'd owe for the rest of my life.

I turned to Nicholas on the couch.

"Nicholas! Say something! Did you know about this?"

Only then did he slowly sit up, scratching his head, looking like none of it had anything to do with him.

"Sherry, Mom said you agreed to it."

"I agreed to nothing!"

"Enough!" My mother slapped the table again. "What's all the shouting for? The house is bought, the money's spent. What good does your yelling do?"

"Undo it! You undo it right now!"

"Can't be undone." Her voice went cold. "The contract's signed, the money's paid, the deed's already come through. How would you undo it?"

The deed had already come through.

Three days.

She'd finished every last piece of paperwork in three days.

And it hit me then that the whole thing had been engineered from the start.

That agent was her person.

That townhouse, from beginning to end, had been bought for Nicholas.

She'd only shown it to me so I would hand over the money willingly.

I was a fool.

A fool who'd lived twenty-eight years.

I sank into a chair, and the tears came.

I looked up at my father.

He'd sat in the corner the whole time, not saying a word.

"Dad!" I called to him. "You're just going to watch? You won't do anything?"

He raised his head and looked at me.

There was so much in that look. Guilt, pain, helplessness. But more than any of it, silence.

His lips moved, and in the end nothing came out.

The same as twenty years ago.

The same as every time I'd been wronged.

He was always the silent one, hunched in the corner, saying nothing.

I closed my eyes in despair.

That night, I didn't sleep at home.

I packed my things, called a car, and went to a hotel.

My mother shouted after me. "Where are you going? It's the middle of the night. Whatever it is, can't it wait until tomorrow?"

I didn't look back.

In the hotel room, I sat through the whole night.

Outside the window lay the Ashford City skyline, blazing with light, the streets full of traffic.

I was born in this city. I grew up in this city. And in that moment I felt like a complete stranger in it.

Early the next morning, I went to see a lawyer.

He listened to my account and was quiet for a long time.

"Ms. Acevedo, this money, it will be very hard to recover."

"Why?"

"That account was opened in your mother's name. You had the password, yes, but legally the account holder is her. When she transferred the money out, it doesn't constitute theft or misappropriation."

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

"You can sue, claim the money was your deposit and demand its return. But you'd have to prove it. Prove that you transferred the money in, that it was your property. That kind of proof is very difficult to establish."

He looked at me, hesitated.

"And besides, this is a family matter. Are you sure you want to go the legal route?"

A family matter.

I gave a bitter laugh.

Coming out of the law office, I stood on the street watching the crowds pass and suddenly felt very tired.

Not tired in my body. Tired in my heart.

I didn't want to fight with them anymore.

Forty-two million. I'd treat it as the price of a lesson.

From then on, I had no family.