Chapter 1

1: 1

Grandma Abbott took my mom's house and handed it to my cousin as his wedding home.

My uncle stood in front of a TV crew and accused my mom of seizing the family's demolition compensation payout.

A crowd of neighbors gathered around and called her an ungrateful daughter.

My mom worked eight years as a housekeeper to buy that house, and she never spent a single night in it after the renovation was done.

I shielded my mom, and I did three things:

I moved her to another city.

I used her own talent to open a company.

And I waited for them to come and try to take it.

The day my uncle burst into that company with a lawyer, I shut the conference room door.

I put the business registration filing up on the screen, and only then did they realize they wouldn't get a single cent.

Grandma always said I was a worthless girl.

Fine. Let her see what a worthless girl could do.

1

The renovation on the new house was barely finished when Grandma planted herself in the doorway, leaning on a mop handle like a staff.

My uncle, his wife, and their son trailed behind her, smug as anything.

Grandma shouted at my mom.

"Bella Summers, you can't live in this house!"

"Duke's getting married. This house is going to be his wedding home!"

My mom finally couldn't hold it in.

"Mom, I worked eight years abroad as a housekeeper to buy this house, saving every cent!"

"Hailey Fox and I did the renovation with our own hands, right down to the gaps between the floorboards—"

"You shut your mouth!"

Grandma jabbed the mop handle at her, driving my mom's back into the wall.

"He's your own brother's son. If you, his aunt, don't help him out, who will?"

"An elder sister is like a mother. How many years have I been telling you that!"

The nerve of her.

I stepped in front of my mom, my head pounding with rage.

"It's our house. Why should we just hand it to your grandson?"

"He wants to get married? Let him earn it himself!"

That was when the TV reporters showed up.

The camera pointed at us like a black hole.

My uncle, Nathan Summers, stood beside it and sighed into the lens.

"You be the judge, everyone. My sister seized our Summers family demolition money to buy a house,"

"and now she won't even let my son use it to get married—"

"She's my sister, sure, but this is just bullying!"

My aunt, Julia Whitney, jumped right in.

"Back when she got divorced and came dragging a kid along, we took her in because we felt sorry for her."

"And it turns out the two of them are ungrateful. They took money from her own family, then bit the hand that fed them!"

My cousin, Duke Summers, actually spat at me and my mom.

Even the reporters looked at us with condemnation, like we were a pair of ingrates.

I clenched my fists until my palms ached. The whole thing was upside down.

For years, my uncle's family had never done an honest day's work, and Grandma knew nothing but how to bleed my mom dry.

The load was so heavy that it was what forced her to divorce my dad in the first place.

She raised me and propped up Grandma's whole family for decades.

And now, somehow, she was the one bullying them?

Years of swallowed grievance finally broke out of my mom.

"I did not! Yes, I got divorced, but I never got a single cent of the Summers demolition money!"

That money had gone straight to my aunt, Julia, to build up a bride price for her son, Duke.

Grandma swung the mop and struck my mom across the shoulder.

"You worthless girl, don't you spout your lies here!"

"Without me, would you even be here today? I'm the one who gave you your life!"

She spun around and waved at the camera.

"Today I'm making it plain. This house belongs to the Summers family!"

"Bella Summers has nothing but one girl, and two women living in a place this big is just a waste!"

"Heaven will punish them for it!"

With that, Grandma dug a sheet of paper out of her pants pocket and flung it in my mom's face.

"Sign this!"

A property waiver agreement.

The second party had already signed—my uncle's son, Duke Summers.

"Sign it, and I'll still treat you as a daughter of the Summers family."

"Don't sign, and I'll act like I never gave birth to you!"

My mom looked down at the paper, her shoulders shaking.

My aunt sneered from the side.

"Sis, you're divorced. What good does it do you to be so good to that Hailey girl?"

"Once Duke gets married and has a kid, he can look after you in your old age."

"You surely can't be counting on that worthless girl of yours, can you?"

A few neighbors came out, and having heard only those slanders from my uncle and aunt, they started talking among themselves.

"That older sister really is a piece of work. Openly robbing her family to buy a house?"

"Poor old woman."

"Raising a daughter like that, you'd be better off raising a dog."

The reporter's camera caught every one of them.

My mom had lived her whole life with her dignity intact, and at those words the color drained from her face.

I raised my voice at them.

"My mom didn't rob anyone! This is hers to begin with—"

But nobody believed me.

Grandma cut me off, shoved the pen into my mom's hand, and lifted a bottle of pesticide in the other.

"Don't sign, and I'll die right here in front of you!"

"Let everyone see how you drove your own mother to her death over a house!"

My mom's tears fell onto the agreement, blotting into dark, spreading rings.

I held my fists clenched tight.

I'm twenty-three this year, and I studied law.

I knew the house was in my mom's name alone. The ownership was clean and clear.

I knew that Grandma taking the house was against the law, that unlawful entry into a home could land her in prison.

But there was still fear in my mom's eyes.

Every time Grandma came asking for money, every time my uncle "borrowed" money and never paid it back, every New Year when my mom was pressured into handing her nephew the biggest red envelope.

That same fear was in her eyes each time.

It was those words, an elder sister is like a mother, that had pressed down on her for forty years.

She picked up the pen and wrote her name at the bottom of the agreement. Bella Summers.

Grandma snatched it away and passed it to my uncle.

He nodded smugly at the camera.

"Thank you to our reporter friends and to everyone watching for standing up for justice on our behalf!"

"See that? Justice always wins!"

My mom slumped down in the doorway, her back against the wall.

Eight hard years of blood and sweat money, earned scrubbing other people's floors, washing their clothes, soothing their children.

Four bedrooms and a living room, most of half a year spent on the renovation, every tile chosen by her own hand.

And now it belonged to someone else.

Grandma was already directing my aunt.

"The second bedroom can be Duke's study. He loves his games—"

"Get a renovation company in there quick and redo the place, don't have the girl's side looking at it and being unhappy—"

I crouched down, helped my mom up, and led her toward the door.

"Hailey…"

I gripped her hand tight.

She had signed the agreement. She had given up the house.

But whether that agreement held any weight in the eyes of the law, I understood better than anyone.

An agreement signed under coercion, one grossly unfair, can be voided.

What they took today was the last time in my mom's life that she would let her heart go soft.

From here on, there would be no more elder sister is like a mother, no debt of raising, no bond of blood.

The "elder sister is like a mother" my mom had owed for half her life was paid off in full the moment she signed.

The rest, I would collect myself.