Chapter 1
“If your father sends country trash food again, I’ll throw it out, box and all,” my mother-in-law, Bernice Phillips, snarled right before tossing the boiled chicken into the muddy yard.
The bird landed with a wet slap on the soaked driveway outside our house in Pinecreek Estate. The family dog, a massive German Shepherd named Buster, sprinted over, sank his teeth into a drumstick, and began shredding the meat. Bernice Phillips shook her hands vigorously as if she had just touched biohazardous waste.
“It is not even fit for a dog, and it might actually dirty his teeth,” she sneered, wiping her fingers on a linen napkin.
I did not scream or cry, but instead stood frozen while staring at the golden chicken skin covered in mud, remembering my father’s phone call at five in the morning.
“Caroline, I sent you one of the roosters we raised right behind our farmhouse,” my father, Samuel, had told me softly over the static-filled line. “There are fresh eggs, corn biscuits your aunt baked, and slow-cooked beans from the iron pot, so please eat it today before it spoils, sweetheart.”
My father had walked almost two miles from his small farm near the town of Oak Ridge to the main highway just to hand that cooler to an express bus driver. He was a retired mechanic who coughed constantly, yet he had still wrapped the plastic box with six layers of heavy tape so nothing would leak during the trip.
Bernice Phillips knew every single detail about that trip, yet she did not care at all.
For three years, she had called me a uneducated hick, a parasite, and an opportunistic gold digger who got lucky by tricking her son, Scott Phillips, whom she praised as a brilliant self-made tech entrepreneur. She constantly reminded me that I should be deeply grateful for everything I enjoyed, including the central air conditioning in our home. She never knew that her son’s luxury BMW was paid for directly out of one of my private investment accounts. Nor did she realize that her weekly shopping sprees at the high-end Plaza Galleria, her expensive spa memberships, and the fine porcelain dishes she bragged about to the neighbors were billed to a credit card linked to my personal trust.
I had remained quiet for a reason that seemed noble to me at the time, which was that I wanted to see if Scott Phillips genuinely loved me or if he only loved the helpless woman he believed he could manipulate.
“Clean up that mess in the yard right now,” Bernice Phillips demanded harshly, pointing her finger toward the door. “And do not pull that victim face with me, because your father needs to learn that we do not eat garbage leftovers in this household.”
Something deep inside my chest snapped into pieces the moment the dog crushed a chicken bone with his jaws.
I turned around and walked calmly toward the storage room near the garage, where a plumber had left a heavy sledgehammer leaning against the door frame. I lifted the heavy steel tool with both hands and marched straight into the formal dining hall.
In the center of the illuminated glass display cabinet stood the crown jewel of Scott Phillips’s pride, which was a massive custom bottle of extra aged bourbon decorated with real gold leaf and an engraved brass plaque. Scott Phillips always claimed he had purchased it at a private auction in San Francisco for eighty thousand dollars, and Bernice Phillips insisted that every single guest pose for a picture beside it.
“What on earth are you doing with that sledgehammer?” Scott Phillips gasped as he walked into the room, his face turning pale as chalk.
I did not offer a single word of explanation to him.
I swung the sledgehammer back with full force and smashed it directly into the reinforced glass cabinet. The violent crash echoed through the entire lower floor, and a second hard strike completely pulverized the heavy glass bottle. Bright amber bourbon flooded across the white rug, filling the room with the strong scent of cheap grain alcohol.
Bernice Phillips dropped to her knees on the ruined carpet, screeching in horror.
“You absolute lunatic!” she shrieked, clutching her face with trembling hands. “When my son gets his hands on you, he is going to throw you onto the street with nothing!”
I reached inside my jacket, pulled out a thick waterproof folder, and threw the legal documents onto the wet carpet right in front of her.
“I suggest you read the name of the actual property owner on those papers before you decide who gets thrown out,” I said calmly.
Bernice Phillips snatched the top page with shaking fingers, and her thin lips began to quiver as her eyes scanned the official stamp.
I pulled out my cell phone, dialed the family notary who was waiting in a car just outside the gated driveway, and spoke clearly into the receiver.
May you like
“Sir, you may proceed inside now, so please activate the immediate revocation of the residential agreement,” I stated.
Bernice Phillips still did not grasp that she was about to lose far more than just a place to live on this rainy afternoon, and she refused to believe what was about to happen next.
