Chapter 2
Marcus stepped inside, closing the door softly behind him.
He set his briefcase on the kitchen table, the same table where Sophie did her homework and Ethan spread his crayons across every inch of the surface.
He didn’t speak until I’d poured him a glass of water and we’d both sat down.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked, for the third time in as many months. “Once we file the 13D, there’s no going back. Helen will fight dirty. She has connections in every courthouse, every newsroom, every boardroom in the state.”
I thought of the words printed on that white card.
RESERVED FOR TRASH.
I thought of Helen calling me dramatic, of Melissa laughing at my son, of the way Ethan had hidden his drawing in the back of his closet when we got home, like it was something to be ashamed of.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” I said.
Marcus nodded.
He flipped open the briefcase and spread the papers across the table, careful not to cover the dinosaur sticker Ethan had stuck right in the center.
“Current stake,” he said, tapping a sheet. “Twelve percent of Langford Group, accumulated over the last two years through shell companies you control. No one’s traced a single share back to you. Helen thinks you’re still living off child support and that tiny graphic design job you told everyone about.”
I almost smiled.
The graphic design job was the cover I’d built the day I walked out of Helen’s house at nineteen, pregnant with Sophie, with nothing but a duffel bag and two hundred dollars in my pocket.
Helen had thrown me out, screaming that I was trash, that I’d ruined her perfect family, that she’d never give me a cent.
She’d kept her word.
When I’d had thyroid cancer two years later, too sick to work, living in a one-bedroom apartment with a newborn and a toddler, she’d refused to take my calls.
When Sophie had needed surgery for her appendix and I’d been three days late on rent, she’d sent a text: Should have thought of that before you got knocked up.
What she didn’t know was that in the middle of those sleepless, broke, terrified nights, I’d taught myself to code.
I’d built a small algorithm for predicting market shifts, sold it to a hedge fund for seven figures, and used that money to build Voss Capital from a laptop on my kitchen table into a firm that controlled over two billion dollars in assets.
I’d done it all under the name Elena Voss.
No one in my family had ever connected the quiet, broke single mom they laughed at to the reclusive billionaire investor the financial world whispered about.
I’d planned to keep it that way forever.
To let Helen keep her precious Langford Group, to let her pretend she’d won.
Until that card.
“Accelerate the buy,” I said to Marcus. “I want another ten percent in the next week. Use the offshore accounts, the ones even the best forensic accountants can’t trace. And leak a small rumor to the business press—say a mystery investor is circling Langford. Nothing that points to me. Just enough to make Helen sweat.”
Marcus jotted notes on a pad, his pen flying.
“Board meeting next Friday,” he said. “Helen’s planning to push through a merger with that textile firm in North Carolina. It’s a terrible deal—she’s getting kickbacks from the CEO. If we can block it, we’ll shake the board’s faith in her.”
“Good,” I said. “Block it. Quietly. Make it look like the other board members are turning on her on their own.”
A car door slammed outside.
I stiffened, then relaxed when I heard Sophie’s laugh.
She and Ethan had walked to the corner store for ice cream, their favorite Friday treat.
Marcus closed the briefcase quickly.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said, standing. “And Clara? Be careful. Helen doesn’t know who she’s fighting yet. But when she finds out, she’ll go for the one thing she knows will hurt you most.”
He nodded toward the window, where Ethan was chasing Sophie up the sidewalk, a cone of mint chocolate chip melting in his hand.
“The kids,” he said.
I nodded.
I knew.
Helen had never cared about anything but winning.
If she thought hurting my children would make me back down, she’d do it without a second thought.
Marcus left.
I wiped the table clean of papers, shoving the briefcase in the back of the pantry behind the canned beans, where the kids would never find it.
I was just wiping the last of the ice cream off Ethan’s cheek when my phone rang.
Helen’s name flashed on the screen.
I almost didn’t answer.
I did.
“You ungrateful little brat,” she screamed, before I could say hello. “What did you do?”
My stomach dropped.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Helen,” I said, keeping my voice flat.
“Don’t play dumb with me,” she shrieked. “Someone just bought five percent of my company. Five percent. The board’s blowing up my phone. I know it’s you. You’re still mad about that stupid card at the wedding, aren’t you? You’re trying to ruin me because you can’t take a joke.”
I said nothing.
I just listened to her breathe hard on the other end, her rage so thick I could almost feel it through the phone.
“You have nothing,” she said, her voice dropping to a snarl. “You’re a single mom with two brats and a dead-end job. You couldn’t buy a share of my company if you sold every last thing you own. But if I find out you had anything to do with this? I will take those kids from you. I will make sure a court sees you’re too unstable to raise them. And I will make sure they grow up knowing exactly what kind of trash their mother really is.”
She hung up.
I stood there, the phone still in my hand, my blood running cold.
I’d known she’d fight.
I’d known she’d threaten.
But I’d never thought she’d go after my children so openly.
A soft tug on my shirt pulled me out of my thoughts.
Ethan stood beside me, his eyes wide.
“Is Grandma Helen mad at us?” he asked.
I knelt down so I was eye level with him.
I brushed a strand of hair off his forehead.
“Grandma Helen is mad at herself,” I said. “Not us. Never us.”
He nodded, but I saw the worry in his eyes, the same worry I’d seen in Sophie’s eyes since the wedding.
That night, after the kids were asleep, I walked to the pantry and pulled out Marcus’s briefcase.
I flipped to the first page of the acquisition plan.
I took a pen and crossed out the timeline that said three months.
I wrote in its place: Two weeks.
I was just putting the pen down when my phone pinged.
A text from an unknown number.
I opened it.
It was a photo.
A photo of Sophie and Ethan, walking into their school that morning.
May you like
Beneath it, four words:
I’m watching them.
