Take Your Love, I'll Take the Fortune

All the relatives knew Audrey had a backward cousin, Cathy, whose gifts ran from a grocery-store pound cake to a funeral wreath of white lilies sent to her graduate school acceptance party. In a previous life, Audrey struck her and was punished: her brother Nick falsely reported her to the university, her admission was revoked, her father cut off her money, and she died alone at twenty-three in a snowdrift eighteen hundred miles from home.

This time, Audrey smiles and accepts the wreath, letting the insult pass to secure her place in the family. Her father, relieved, offers her five percent of the family holdings and her brother gifts her money and a car; she asks for the Bugatti. When Cathy flies back to Tempas City and destroys Audrey's room, tearing up the only photos of her mother, Audrey sends a calm voice note instead of confronting her.

Her father calls, full of guilt, offering more shares. Audrey's grief is real, but so is her calculation: what is a moment of pride compared to a lifetime's inheritance?