4
Claire had never seen me like this, so vicious and articulate. For a moment, she forgot to play her part, and a
sliver of pure hatred flashed in her eyes.
“That’s enough, Ava!” Leo barked. “Claire is not the kind of person you’re describing. You’ve always misunde rstood her. It’s not her fault she was born with a weak constitution. Why can’t you let it go after all these
years?”
I didn’t even glance at him. My eyes were locked on Carter. “I’m not greedy. I’ll have my lawyer contact yours Everything I’m legally entitled to, I want, down to the last penny. Once the assets are divided, we sign the papers. I won’t waste another second of your precious time.”
My eagerness to be rid of him clearly bruised his ego. He just stood there, scowling, and didn’t reply.
Claire, meanwhile, started crying again, her whimpers of pain growing louder.
Carter couldn’t stand to see her suffer. As he scooped her into his arms, he shot a final warning at me. “I’ll have this handled as soon as possible. But I’m warning you, Ava. Don’t you dare lay a hand on Claire. If I find out you’re messing with her behind my back, I will make you pay.”
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14:27
“You have got to be kidding me, you psycho!” Maya screamed at his retreating back. “It’s always ‘don’t hurt Claire!’ When has Ava ever done anything to her? Wasting her life helping a piece of trash like you rebuild your empire was a nightmare! You deserve to be bankrupt! You deserve to be struck by lightning!”
Carter didn’t look back. He just carried Claire down the hall and disappeared.
Leo opened his mouth to say something else, but I just turned and shut the hotel room door in his face.
Maya found me the best divorce lawyer in the city. Her instructions were simple: “Don’t leave that bitch a single dime that’s rightfully yours.”
While the legal battle was gearing up, my parents showed up.
They started with the guilt trip. They admitted they’d been hard on me over the years, but it wasn’t intention-
al, they claimed. It’s just so difficult with three children-one sick, one rebellious, and one who was… distant.
“You’ll understand when you have kids of your own,” my mother said, her voice dripping with faux sympathy.
“No matter what we do, you’ll find fault. You think we owe you something for the rest of your life.”
I almost laughed. They say you can’t know a parent’s love until you have a child of your own. But sometimes, having children just reveals that some parents are incapable of love. We spend half our lives healing from them and the other half pretending they loved us all along. It’s a joke.
“Just get to the point,” I said, cutting through the performance.
My father’s face tightened with anger. He looked ready to yell, but my mother placed a restraining hand on his arm. She sighed, adopting a fragile, wounded expression. “Your mom and dad won’t be around forever,
Ava. Your brother and sister are the ones who will be with you for your whole life. You don’t want to end up with no family at all, do you?”
A surge of anger burned through me. “Enough. Say what you came to say. I don’t want to hear this nonsense. You refuse to admit you played favorites, that you never loved me, because you want to emotionally black- mail me into stepping aside for Claire and continuing to clean up Leo’s messes for the rest of my life. Have you forgotten everything you’ve done?”
When I was little, I had severe asthma. Every attack felt like I was drowning. Running ten yards would leave me gasping for air. The first time I told them, my mother snapped, “Your sister is sick. We are very busy. Can you stop lying for attention? It’s incredibly annoying.”
After that, I never told them about my health again.
One day, I made a short dash through the rain to find shelter and collapsed on the sidewalk, unable to breat- he. A neighbor found me and rushed me to the hospital. I was lucky; I was young, and my lungs recovered. The neighbor paid for everything.
When my parents finally showed up, I was already stable. The first thing they said was, “What are you trying to pull now? Can’t you just behave?”
The neighbor, a kind woman who had seen it all, finally lost it. She screamed at them, called them unfit to be
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Chapter
parents, cursed them for not even knowing their own daughter had asthma.
They were humiliated. For a long time after that, they barely spoke to me.
That memory is a nail driven straight into my heart. It will be there forever.
