PART 2

For a moment, I thought I must have heard him wrong.

Leave the house by noon.

Not because I had committed a crime. Not because I had harmed anyone. Not because I had dragged the family name into some scandal my mother would whisper about for years.

Because I had protected what my grandfather had left me.

I looked from my father to my mother. Cynthia Kingsley sat perfectly straight in her cream silk robe, one hand curled around the stem of an untouched mimosa. She looked annoyed, not devastated. As if I had spilled something valuable.

“You’re serious?” I asked.

My father’s jaw tightened. “You made an adult decision. Adults live with adult consequences.”

I almost laughed. It rose like a cough, then died in my throat.

“Grandpa left that money to me.”

“He left it to the family,” my mother snapped.

“No,” I said. “He left it to me. His will was very clear.”