Chapter 1 - The Slap
Daniel’s palm hit my face so hard my head snapped sideways and the crystal chandelier blurred above me.
“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”
For half a second, nobody in the marble foyer moved.
My older brother stood inches from me in his dark navy shirt, breathing hard, his hand still raised from the slap. Behind him, six relatives stared in stunned silence. Aunt Margaret covered her mouth. Uncle Robert looked toward the staircase as if pretending he had not seen anything.
And Evelyn smiled.
My brother’s wife stood near the bottom stair in a yellow satin dress, one hand resting against the railing, satisfaction softening her face.
I tasted blood where my tooth had cut the inside of my cheek.
“Daniel,” Aunt Margaret whispered.
He pointed at the front door.
“Now.”
I slowly turned back toward him.
Three years earlier, I would have cried. Six months earlier, I might have begged him to stop humiliating me in front of our family.
That evening, I felt something colder.
Finished.
Evelyn stepped forward and pointed at the white leather handbag hanging from my shoulder.
“Go away and leave everything behind.”
I looked at her.
“My handbag?”
“Everything,” she repeated. “You came into this family with nothing.”
A few relatives looked down.
That almost made me laugh.
Almost.
I tightened my fingers around the handbag and looked past Daniel at the chandelier my mother had chosen twenty-four years earlier. Then at the sweeping staircase, the Italian marble floor, the carved walnut doors, and the foyer ceiling my father had spent eighteen months restoring.
Daniel grabbed the collar of my white lace dress and jerked me toward him.
“Why are you still standing here?”
I looked down at his fist twisted in my dress.
Then I looked into his eyes.
“Take your hand off me.”
He released me with a shove.
Evelyn laughed under her breath.
That was when I reached into my handbag and removed my phone.
Daniel rolled his eyes.
“Calling the police because your brother slapped you?”
“No.”
I opened the secure banking application and pressed the authorization I had prepared forty-eight hours earlier.
EXECUTE.
Daniel’s phone rang first.
He frowned at the caller ID.
Three seconds later, Evelyn’s phone began ringing.
Her smile disappeared.
Then Uncle Robert’s phone lit up.
Aunt Margaret’s followed.
Another relative reached into his pocket as his phone started vibrating.
Daniel answered.
“This is Daniel.”
His face changed.
“What do you mean suspended?”
Evelyn answered her own phone.
“No, there must be a mistake.”
I slipped my phone back into my handbag.
Daniel looked at me.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing that wasn’t already mine to do.”
His face drained.
I walked toward the front door.
Evelyn followed me three steps.
“Emily!”
I stopped with my hand on the brass handle.
She looked suddenly less elegant in that yellow dress.
More frightened.
“Because none of this belongs to you,” I said.
Daniel lowered his phone.
“What are you talking about?”
I opened the door.
Cold evening air moved through the foyer.
“From tonight onward, you won’t get a penny.”
Behind me, four phones were ringing at once.
Daniel suddenly lunged forward.
“Emily, wait!”
I stepped outside before he could reach me.
And standing at the bottom of the mansion steps was the one person Daniel absolutely did not expect to see.
May you like
My father’s attorney.
📖 I had stopped their money, but the attorney waiting outside carried a document Daniel believed had disappeared with our father—and it changed who actually owned the mansion. 👇
