Chapter 3

I paused what I was doing. "This is my own property."

"The money you spent was Daddy's." He clasped his hands behind his back. "Daddy's money belongs to the Holt family. The Holt family's things have nothing to do with outsiders."

Outsiders?

I lifted my head and looked at him.

A four-year-old boy standing before me, looking at me the way you'd look at a thief.

The coldness in those little eyes ran even deeper than Ethan's.

"I'm only taking one thing." I tightened my fingers around the brooch and stood up. "Everything else, I'll leave."

"No." He moved to block the doorway in a single step, stretching both arms wide. "You can't steal things from the Holt family."

"Oliver, move."

"No!" He raised his voice. "You're a beggar! A thieving beggar! Auntie Viv said once you're gone you can't come back, and if you come back it means you're stealing!"

My temples throbbed. "I'm going to say this one more time. Move."

"No! Put it down!"

He lunged at me and grabbed at the small velvet pouch in my hand.

I instinctively pulled back. The pouch was ripped open in an instant.

The brooch slipped free and hit the floor, shattering into pieces.

I stood there, frozen, and heard my mother's voice from the day she'd pinned it on me.

She had said: "Hannah, this piece has been passed down through six generations of our family. One day you'll pass it to your daughter, and if there's no daughter, then a daughter-in-law..."

I had no daughter. I had no daughter-in-law.

I had only this brooch.

Six generations. And here, in my generation, it was shattered by my own son.

Oliver stood nearby and muttered under his breath: "Who told you not to let go..."

I looked at him through burning eyes. "I told you — this was left to me by my grandmother."

"Do you even know why your grandmother is lying in that care home?"

Oliver blinked and took a step back:

"I don't know any grandmother. All I know is some money-burning old woman..."