Chapter 1She Smashed My Ferrari First

The moment she laid eyes on the red Ferrari parked in the driveway, my son’s fiancée came unglued.

"What is this?" Courtney shrieked, her voice scraping against the marble entryway. "You bought a supercar with "our" house fund? Cynthia, have you completely lost your mind? How can you be so utterly shameless?"

She took two furious steps toward me, pointing a manicured nail in my face. "You return that car right this second! I haven't even sat behind the wheel of something that nice, and here you are pissing away Dustin’s money like water!"

I didn’t bother arguing with her. I simply pulled the quarterly financial distribution statement from my handbag and tossed it onto the kitchen island.

"My husband just closed an eight-figure executive restructuring," I said evenly. "His performance bonus cleared at one point two million. The car was barely three hundred and eighty thousand."

Courtney’s face flushed an ugly, mottled crimson. "Three hundred and eighty thousand? You bought a toy for yourself that costs more than a decent condo? Aren't you afraid your greedy soul will rot in hell? That’s Stratton money! Every single dollar you blow on yourself is a dollar Dustin doesn't get to spend on me! If you keep bleeding his inheritance dry, how are we supposed to buy our estate in the hills?"

She threw a full-blown tantrum right there on the polished hardwood, sobbing and stamping her feet like a toddler. I didn't offer her a single word of comfort. I turned on my heel and walked up to my room.

The next morning, I walked outside to find my Ferrari shattered into scrap metal.

Windows smashed in. The custom cherry paint gouged down to the bare primer with deep, hateful scrapes. And there stood Courtney on the lawn, leaning casually against a golf club, an insufferable smirk plastered across her face.

"Listen to me carefully, Cynthia," she sneered, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "You’re nothing but Dustin’s stepmother. A glorified replacement. "I" am the future matriarch of this family. If you ever dare spend another dime of our money, it won’t be the car I take a bat to next time. It’ll be your skull."

A cold, quiet chuckle rose in my throat.

If Dustin, the orphan boy I spent twenty years pouring my soul into, was truly this irredeemable, then I had no objections whatsoever to cutting the legal cord and letting him drown.

* * *

Just yesterday, after the dealership delivered the car, I had been curled up on the velvet chaise in the living room, savoring a quiet glass of Pinot Noir. The late afternoon sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains, warm and tranquil.

Then the heavy oak front doors swung open.

Dustin walked in, weighed down by high-end shopping bags from the luxury mall downtown, his little girlfriend trailing right behind him.

He offered me that boyish, practiced grin of his. "Mom, whose Ferrari is that out front? Did you borrow a friend's ride?"

I sat up, genuinely pleased, eager to share the joy. "No, sweetie. I bought it. Beautiful, isn't it?"

Dustin’s smile instantly froze on his face. The easy warmth vanished, replaced by an edge of sharp, predatory suspicion. "Mom, you're kidding, right? Dad said the liquid capital in the family account was reserved for my wedding with Courtney."

I smiled gently, setting down my glass. "I didn't touch your wedding fund, Dustin. Your father's performance incentives cleared early this week. A million-two after taxes. The car was three-eighty. There's plenty left over."

Before the sentence was fully out of my mouth, Courtney let out an ear-splitting shriek.

"What? Nearly four hundred grand!" She shook with rage. "That could have been the down payment on the waterfront property in the cove! You stole our house money to buy a midlife crisis on wheels? Cynthia, how can you be so disgusting?"

Before I could react, she hurled the heavy designer shoe box in her hands straight at my head.

The rigid, sharp cardboard corner struck my left cheekbone. A sharp crack echoed in the room, followed immediately by a blinding, white-hot sting. Warm blood began to bead along my skin.

Courtney didn't even pause. She spun toward Dustin, tears streaming down her carefully contoured cheeks. "Dustin, you promised me! You swore to God that as soon as your dad's bonus came in, we were buying that mansion! I already took pictures of the blueprints! I told my sorority sisters, my cousins, everyone! How am I supposed to show my face now? She's humiliating me!"

Dustin’s expression darkened into an ugly scowl. He glared at me, his eyes heavy with accusation. "Mom, why would you go behind our backs and buy a car like that? Don't you know I already had plans for that money?"

The warmth in my chest curdled into ice. I stared at him, my hand pressed against my bleeding cheek, disbelief parting my lips. "Since when do you make plans for your father’s earnings?"

Dustin’s eyes flickered with a brief flash of guilt. But under Courtney’s frantic nudging and sharp elbows, he straightened his posture, puffing out his chest like an insolent teenager. "You know damn well that's Dad’s money, Cynthia. You have no right to blow through it like this..."

Seeing Dustin take her side, Courtney’s eyes flared with vicious triumph. She looked down her nose at me, her lip curled in utter contempt.

"Drop the saintly routine, Cynthia! Dustin told me everything. You’re just his stepmother! A second-string wife who swept in, someone who hasn't earned a single red cent her entire adult life. You have never had the right to call the shots in this house!"

The words spilled out of her like venom from an open valve.

"Every penny in the Stratton estate belongs to Dustin, which means it belongs to me! If you want a roof over your head when you're old and decrepit, you’d better start bowing your head and—"

"Enough!"

I rose from the sofa, the full height of my posture commanding the quiet room. My voice was steady, but it cut through the air like a whip.

I pointed directly at the front doors. "Courtney, the wedding is canceled. Pack your things and get the hell out of my home."

Courtney’s jaw dropped, then snapped shut into a furious sneer. "You dare kick me out? Have you lost your damn mind? Have you forgotten that my mother saved Dustin’s life?"

She took a menacing step toward me. "If my mother hadn’t stepped up and dragged your precious heir out of that alley years ago, the Stratton line would have ended right then and there! You owe our family a debt you can never repay! Handing over this entire estate wouldn't even begin to square the ledger!"