By the time my fingers had turned completely blue, my family was laughing over expensive Christmas presents just six feet away from me. I stood outside in a bitter -10°C Colorado blizzard, barefoot in flimsy dinner flats, because my father had decided that my voice was a punishable crime.
“You want to talk like an adult?” he had hissed earlier, shoving me violently through the heavy back door. “Then survive like one.”
The deadbolt snapped shut behind me.
Through the frosted kitchen window, I watched my stepmother, Victoria, pour expensive Pinot Noir into crystal glasses. My half-brother, Julian, tore open a luxury gaming console, while my father lifted a gold watch from a velvet box. When I knocked once, Victoria gave me a tight, smug smile and closed the curtain.
At dinner, I had made one mistake: I asked why my acceptance letter to the elite Briarwood Academy had been hidden from me. Julian had snickered, waving the letter over the table: “Dad already declined the offer for you. Somebody has to stay behind and babysit the twins next year.”
My father had caught my wrist so hard my fork clattered: “You do not embarrass me in my house!”
His house. That was always his favorite phrase.
But my father didn’t know my secret. Before my late mother passed away, she had pressed a silver key into my hand and warned me: “When you turn eighteen, call your grandmother. Not a single day before. Your father is terrified of her for a reason.”
I turned eighteen at midnight.
Barefoot, shivering, and freezing on the patio, I pulled out my phone and dialed the number.
At exactly 11:47 p.m., twin beams of headlights rolled up the snow-covered road. A sleek, midnight-black limousine slid through the storm. A personal driver opened the door, and an elegant older woman wrapped in a pristine white cashmere coat stepped out.
My billionaire grandmother, Eleanor Vale, looked at my freezing, trembling frame, then looked up at the glowing windows of the mansion. Her face didn’t flinch. She simply turned to her head of security and said one word:
“Demolish.”
