“No!” Chloe shrieked, standing up, her chair scraping violently against the floor. “You can’t do that! He’s your family!”
“He is the man who laughed while I was sent to sleep on a concrete floor with my dead husband’s child in my womb,” I corrected her, my voice rising, filling the room with the absolute, terrifying authority of a woman who had survived the worst life had to offer. “You are not my family. You are the people who watched me bleed and complained about the stain.”
My father stood up, his hands shaking. “Clara, please. The economy is terrible. If Julian loses his job, they’ll lose the house. We co-signed the loan for them. It will bankrupt us!”
They were destitute. The universe had violently balanced the scales. Because they had tied their entire financial security to Julian’s arrogant career, my single signature had just annihilated the entire family’s wealth.
