He looked nothing like the exhausted man who had read the will just forty-eight hours earlier. Gone was the rumpled suit. In its place was a tailored tuxedo and a calm, almost satisfied expression.
“Get in, Eliana,” he said quietly. “We have a great deal to discuss.”
Still shaking from the cold—and from the last two days of disbelief—I climbed into the warm interior of the limousine. The leather seats were pristine. A bottle of sparkling water waited beside me, untouched.
“Mr. Sterling?” I asked, clutching my single bag of clothes. “I don’t understand. You said there was no money. You said my aunt inherited everything.”
“I said the liquid assets were gone,” he corrected gently. “Your mother’s medical care consumed nearly all of it. What I read at the funeral was the Public Will—the version your parents intended the world, and especially your Aunt Dina, to see.”
He reached into his briefcase and handed me a thick envelope.
“Your father knew his sister,” Sterling continued. “He suspected that without the promise of money, her true nature would surface.”
My hands trembled as I opened the envelope.
“Your parents created a contingency trust,” he explained. “A test of character. If Dina took you in and treated you as family for thirty days—despite believing there was no inheritance—the trust would activate. Five million dollars, split evenly between you.”
My breath caught. “Five… million?”
“But,” he said, his tone sharpening, “there was a second clause. If she expelled you, neglected you, or caused you harm within those thirty days, she would lose everything.”
The realization hit me all at once.
“So… because she kicked me out?”
“After only two days,” Sterling said with a thin smile, “she failed spectacularly. The trust is now yours alone.”
I leaned back as tears spilled down my face—not from grief, but from overwhelming relief.
“And the house?” I asked quietly.
“She technically owns it,” Sterling replied. “Along with three years of unpaid property taxes and extensive structural repair liens your father used to fund your mother’s experimental treatment. Without the trust to sustain it, the house will drain her dry. Bankruptcy is almost inevitable.”
My parents had known. Even in death, they had protected me.
“Where would you like to go?” Sterling asked. “The estate maintains a fully furnished penthouse downtown.”
“Yes,” I said. Then paused. “But first… can we drive past the house?”
The driver nodded and turned the wheel.
As the limousine slowed near the driveway, I saw her—Dina—standing on the porch in her robe, coffee in hand, staring smugly at the sidewalk where she expected me to return, broken and begging.
I lowered the tinted window.
She looked up.
Her face drained of color as she saw me inside the limousine, calm, composed, envelope in hand—with the city’s most powerful attorney seated beside me.
The mug slipped from her fingers and shattered on the concrete.
She ran toward the car, screaming, waving, suddenly desperate—realizing she had made a mistake, though not yet understanding how devastating it truly was.
“Keep driving,” I said.
The window slid up, sealing her out.
I didn’t feel hatred. I didn’t need to.
She had built her own cage—and I had just been handed the key.
My life wasn’t over.
It was just beginning.
