My stepmother handed me a trash bag of my clothes and said, “Your father is d;ea;d, and the house is mine. Get out.” She slammed the door in my face while her kids laughed from the window. I was eighteen, broke, and alone. She thought that was the end of the story. She didn’t know my father had left a separate, secret will in a safety deposit box that only I had the key to. Ten years later, I bought the company she worked for. Today, I’m going to walk into her office and ask her the same question she asked me: “How does it feel to lose everything?”

Victoria kicked the bag toward me with the toe of her stiletto. It slid across the marble floor with a plastic rustle that sounded like an insult.

“Your inheritance,” she sneered. Her voice wasn’t the sweet, syrupy tone she used when my father was in the room. It was sharp, jagged glass. “Your father is dead, Julian, and the house is mine. The prenup expired last week. You have zero claim to the estate.”

She stepped closer, her perfume—a heavy, cloying scent of gardenias—suffocating me.

“Get out.”

I blinked, my brain struggling to process the sudden violence of her words. “Victoria… I live here. This is my home.”

“Not anymore,” she said. “You’re eighteen. You’re a legal adult. And you are trespassing.”

I looked past her, through the archway into the living room. My stepbrothers, Chad and Brad, were lounging on the leather sofa. They were twins, two years older than me, with the same cruel slant to their mouths as their mother. They saw me looking. Chad mimed a crying face, rubbing his eyes with his fists. Brad laughed, raising a glass of champagne in a mock toast.

They weren’t mourning. They were winning.

“Victoria, please,” I whispered, the fight draining out of me. “It’s pouring rain. I have nowhere to go. I have no money.”

“Not my problem,” she said. She opened the heavy oak front door, letting the wind and rain blow into the foyer. “Figure it out. That’s what people like you do, isn’t it? Scrounge.”

She shoved the trash bag into my chest. I stumbled back, clutching it instinctively. It was heavy with my clothes, thrown in haphazardly.

I stepped out onto the porch. The rain soaked me instantly.

Victoria didn’t say goodbye. She just slammed the door.

The lock clicked—a heavy, decisive sound of finality.

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