Prologue
My mother loved giving money away.
"Other people have it so much worse than you." That was her favorite line. After Dad died, she sold his company, turned it into roughly fourteen million dollars, and donated every cent.
When I cried about my tuition being gone, she called me selfish. Said she was done supporting me.
So I worked my way through high school, juggling jobs and exams just to make it to graduation.
I thought college would finally be my escape — the day I got out from under her roof for good. But the second I wasn't looking, she emptied my bank account and donated that too.
Then she took out a loan in my name. Nearly three hundred thousand dollars of debt, slapped onto my back without my knowledge.
I worked myself bloody trying to pay it off. Literally — coughing blood between shifts. That's how I ended up with cancer.
Meanwhile, she was out there being celebrated. The great philanthropist. The woman with the heart of gold. Thousands singing her praises.
When I opened my eyes again, I had my father's will in my hand.
"The company is mine. You don't get to decide what happens to it."
Chapter 1
"Mrs. Chambers, fourteen million dollars isn't pocket change. Are you sure you want to give it all away?"
Standing in my own living room again, I heard the voices I hadn't heard in what felt like forever. Reporters. Cameras. The whole circus.
Lenses crowded around my mother's face.
Her makeup was flawless — not too heavy, not too light. She lifted the microphone and let her voice drip with compassion.
"The children up in those mountains have nothing. We live in the city, we have the company, we have everything. Donating this money — fourteen million — it's the least I can do. I want it from the bottom of my heart."
"I want those mountain kids to have a real shot at happiness too."
The exact same tone. Word for word, the same lines she'd fed them last time around.
The reporters ate it up. They praised her. Said she came from nothing, married into one of the wealthiest families in the city, and never forgot where she came from. Said she'd always been a giver, a humanitarian. They said it was easy to go from rags to riches, but going back the other way? Almost no one could do it. And my mother had.
The compliments just kept coming.
In my last life, I was on my knees begging her. Crying.
"Mom, please — that's everything Dad built. You can't sell it!"
But no matter how hard I begged, she didn't blink. She turned on me right there in front of all of them, voice cold with disappointment.
"I broke my back raising you all the way through high school, and the second I donate a little money, you're throwing a tantrum. You're just like your father."
"Selfish. Spoiled rotten. That's on me — I let you get this way."
Right there in front of every camera in the room, she ripped me apart.
Said I was an ungrateful daughter.
Said I didn't understand the good she was trying to do.
The reporters saw which way the wind was blowing. My mother was the story of the moment, and they wanted the angle that would trend. So they painted me as the leech. The thankless brat sucking her dry.
And my mother? She became the noble, principled woman who'd had the strength to disown her own daughter for the greater good. A saint.
Not this time. This time I wasn't going to just stand there and take it.
I looked straight into the cameras and said it loud:
"My mother doesn't even have half a million dollars to her name. How exactly is she planning to donate fourteen million?"
"My father left everything to me. She doesn't have a cent of her own."
The reporters pivoted on a dime. Microphones swung back to her face.
"Is that true?"
"Mrs. Chambers, if you don't actually have the money, then this fourteen-million-dollar pledge — isn't that misleading the public?"
Her face tightened. The look she shot me could've drawn blood.
But she turned right back to the cameras without missing a beat, smooth as glass, no trace of the corner she was just backed into.
"My daughter is still a minor. As her mother, I have every right to manage the estate on her behalf."
"So everyone, please — there's nothing to worry about."
Another round of soothing the press. As soon as the last reporter cleared the door, she rounded on me.
"Who told you about the will?"
"Your father loved me more than anything. My name is on that estate. Whatever fantasy you're holding onto — let it go."
