Chapter 6
Margaret Carter was not a smart woman.
She was cruel, and greedy, and arrogant, but she was not smart. Which is why, three weeks after we filed the criminal charges, she decided to break into my penthouse.
It was two a.m. I was up with Lila, who’d had a bad dream, rocking her in the dark living room, when the motion alarm on the balcony went off.
My blood ran cold.
I grabbed my phone from the coffee table, one hand still holding Lila tight, and pulled up the security camera feed.
There she was.
Margaret, dressed in black, a crowbar in her hand, prying open the sliding glass door to my balcony. She’d climbed forty floors up the side of the building, like a common thief, her face set in a snarl of rage.
I hit the panic button.
The building’s security team was on site in under two minutes. Two guards burst through the balcony door, tackling Margaret before she could take three steps into the living room. She screamed and kicked, the crowbar clattering to the floor, as they cuffed her hands behind her back.
I stood in the hallway, Lila pressed to my chest, and watched.
“You crazy bitch!” Margaret shrieked, straining against the guards. “I’ll kill you! I’ll take everything from you, just you wait—”
“Shut her up,” I said to the lead guard. “The police are on their way.”
The cops arrived ten minutes later. They took one look at Margaret, cuffed and screaming, the crowbar on the floor, the security camera footage, and arrested her on the spot. Trespassing, attempted burglary, possession of burglary tools, criminal threats.
They led her out, her heels clicking on the marble floor, still yelling curses, and I locked the door behind them.
The next morning, the story was everywhere.
“CARTER MATRIARCH ARRESTED IN BURGLARY TRY AT HALE PENTHOUSE.”
The public tide turned completely. The same people who’d believed Margaret’s lies a month earlier now called her a monster. How could a woman break into a new mother’s home in the middle of the night? What kind of person did that?
Daniel tried to distance himself.
He called a press conference that afternoon, standing in front of a bank of microphones, his face grave.
“I had no idea my mother was capable of this,” he said, his voice shaking for the cameras. “I am shocked and appalled by her actions. I have always wanted only the best for Lila and for my ex-wife. I am cooperating fully with the police investigation into both the burglary and the financial allegations. My mother acted alone. I had no part in any of it.”
I watched the press conference on TV, Lila playing on the floor at my feet, and laughed. A cold, bitter laugh.
He threw his own mother under the bus to save himself.
Margaret didn’t take it well.
From jail, she called every reporter who would listen, spilling every detail of their plan. How Daniel had come up with the idea to embezzle. How he’d forged my dad’s signature on old documents to try to make the transfers look legitimate. How he’d planned to take Lila and raise her with his new girlfriend—his secretary, a girl ten years younger than me, who he’d been sleeping with for a year.
She released the text messages. The emails. The photos of Daniel and his secretary on vacation in Cabo, taken when I was eight months pregnant.
Their alliance was in tatters.
They hated each other more than they hated me.
That weekend, I drove out to the cemetery, to my dad’s grave.
I brought Lila with me, wrapped in a soft blanket, and laid a bouquet of his favorite yellow roses on the headstone.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, sitting down on the grass next to the stone, Lila in my lap. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come see you. Things have been… crazy.”
I traced the letters of his name, carved into the cold granite.
“I should have listened to you,” I said quietly. “You never liked Daniel. You said he was soft, that he had hungry eyes. I thought you were just being overprotective. I was wrong.”
I looked down at Lila, who was chewing on the edge of her blanket, completely oblivious.
“I’m fighting for us,” I said. “For your company. For her. I’m not going to let them win. I promise.”
A soft breeze blew through the oak trees above us, rustling the leaves, and for a second, I swore I could smell my dad’s old pipe tobacco.
May you like
I stayed there for an hour, talking to him, telling him about Lila, about the company, about everything that had happened. When I left, I felt lighter. Stronger.
Like he was right there with me.
