My Greedy Cousin Tried To Evict Me From My Own Mansion — He Didn’t Know I Had The Receipts
Part 2
I turned my back on Craig and walked straight out of the drawing room.
My stiff leather slippers slapped softly against the expensive parquet floor as I headed for the study.
Greg followed a few paces behind me, his heavy boots crushing the suffocating silence of the house.
The air in the study was stale, smelling intensely of old cherrywood and cold cigar smoke.
I marched around the massive claw-footed desk and grasped the brass handle of the top drawer.
The wood groaned in protest as I yanked it open.
I lifted the heavy black leather ledger out and marched back into the drawing room.
Craig was tapping his silver-tipped cane against the floorboards, a frantic and nervous rhythm.
I dropped the ledger squarely onto the center of the coffee table.
The heavy thud made the solicitor flinch and blink rapidly behind his spectacles.
I ordered him to turn to page forty-two and read the entry for April twelfth, twenty-three years ago.
The solicitor adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses and squinted at the cramped ink.
He read the line aloud, his voice trembling slightly.
Sixteen shillings.
That was the miserable monthly stipend my father paid the orphanage to ensure he never had to see my face.
Less than what he spent on wine in a single week.
I stepped closer to Craig, forcing him to smell the faint scent of lye soap that still clung to my skin.
I told him my father was a miser who didn’t part with a copper unless it bought him comfort.
Craig spat that it was just a minor philanthropic endeavor.
The violent flush had drained completely from his cheeks, leaving him a sickly, waxen yellow.
I leaned in close enough for him to see the permanent, raised scars along my jawline.
I informed him that Megan, the cruel woman from the orphanage, was currently sitting in my kitchen.
Greg had offered her a massive sum to testify on my behalf.
She had brought the black wool cloak I was wrapped in as an infant.
The moths might have eaten the hem, but the family crest stitched into the lining was perfectly intact.
Craig stopped breathing entirely.
Greg stepped up right beside me, casting a long, solid shadow over the terrified cousin.
He promised to expose the cowardice of this family and ruin Craig’s reputation forever if he ever stepped foot in a courtroom.
Craig grasped his cane, his knuckles turning stark white, and hauled himself up.
He didn’t say a single word as he limped frantically out of the room.
The solicitor scrambled after him, pulling the heavy oak door shut behind them.
I finally let out a ragged breath, the adrenaline draining out of my hollow calves.
Would you have taken the money to disappear, or would you have stood your ground to take everything they tried to steal from you?
Part 3
Brenda did not take the money to disappear.
She stood her ground in the center of the opulent drawing room, watching her arrogant cousin flee the estate he had tried to steal from her.
She took everything that was rightfully hers, choosing the dangerous path of power over the quiet safety of submission.
But to understand how a girl from the slums found herself holding the keys to a massive Mayfair fortune, one must look back to the beginning.
For twenty-three years, Brenda’s only inheritance had been the suffocating stench of boiled turnips and damp, rotting wool.
She was a permanent fixture at the local parish orphanage, a place entirely forgotten by the civilized world.
Her days were measured entirely by the brutal swing of a heavy floor rag.
She scrubbed the uneven, splintering floorboards until her knuckles cracked and bled freely into the caustic lye.
She never waited for a savior.
Saviors rarely ventured to the rotting, diseased edge of the city.
The water in her wooden bucket was a murky, disgusting soup of dirt and stiff bristles.
She plunged her raw, blistered hands into it anyway, wringing out the heavy cloth with mechanical precision.
The lye bit sharply into the fresh splits along her skin.
It was a familiar, stinging pain that she had learned to completely ignore.
By the strict laws of the parish, she should have been turned out onto the merciless streets seven years ago.
But the home needed a drudge, and Brenda desperately needed a roof that didn’t leak directly onto her face.
She stayed in the shadows, becoming as unnoticed and unloved as the rising damp in the masonry.
The registry book from the night she was left on the front steps had rotted away in a cellar flood over a decade ago.
It took whatever surname she might have had down into the mud with it.
The building was oppressively quiet, save for the rhythmic, wet slosh of her scrubbing.
A distant, muffled cough from a sick child in the infirmary echoed down the dark hall.
The cold was a deep, bone-settling chill that lived permanently inside the stone walls.
Brenda dragged the back of her wrist across her forehead, leaving a long streak of dirty water near her hairline.
She prepared to move to the next stretch of hallway, a thankless task that would never truly end.
Then came a sound that absolutely did not belong in her world.
It started as a low, powerful rumble vibrating through the fragile floorboards beneath her aching knees.
The old wood groaned in protest.
The heavy, syncopated strike of iron-shod hooves echoed loudly into the muddy courtyard.
Premium leather carriage springs squealed against the uneven cobblestones.
Brenda sat back on her heels, her heart giving a strange, unfamiliar flutter.
Carriages of that immense weight and expense did not come to this miserable corner of the world.
Sometimes a parish cart arrived, rattling loudly and smelling of nervous horse sweat, dropping off sacks of cheap oats or another squalling bundle of tragedy.
But this sound was entirely different.
She wiped her wet hands on her coarse, gray apron and pushed herself up.
Her stiff joints popped loudly in the quiet, empty hall.
Walking cautiously to the narrow, leaded window, she peered through the heavy distortion of the cheap glass.
In the absolute center of the mud-churned courtyard sat a massive beast of a carriage.
It was polished black, gleaming aggressively even beneath the heavy, overcast sky.
The horses were enormous, restless grays, snorting thick plumes of white vapor into the freezing winter air.
The carriage door opened from the inside before the driver could even step down.
A man stepped out into the thick, clinging muck without a single flinch.
He didn’t look around with the usual disgusted pity of the wealthy charity board members.
He didn’t stare at the peeling paint or the cracked roof tiles with obvious revulsion.
He just stood there in the mud, adjusting the cuffs of his dark, impeccably tailored wool coat.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a face carved from harsh, unforgiving angles.
His dark hair was swept back by the bitter wind.
His jaw was set extremely tight, making him look like a man walking toward a grim execution.
Suddenly, the shrill bark of Megan, the cruel matron of the home, shattered the quiet air.
Brenda winced involuntarily at the sound of her name.
Megan ordered her to leave the bucket immediately and get down to the front parlor.
Brenda looked down at her ruined, raw hands.
They were bright pink and trembling slightly from the biting cold.
Her dress was a shapeless sack of rough-spun wool, stained heavily at the hem with dirty water.
She didn’t bother trying to smooth her wild, unkempt hair.
Vain attempts at dignity only invited mockery and cruelty in a place like this.
She left the bucket in the middle of the dark corridor and walked slowly toward the wooden stairs.
Her worn boots scuffed loudly against the uneven floorboards.
She wondered briefly if the parish had finally decided she ate too much of the meager turnip ration and was throwing her out.
The smell of the orphanage seemed suddenly oppressive as she descended the dark staircase.
It was a pervasive, inescapable blend of stale urine, boiled cabbage, and cold ash.
Megan was hovering anxiously outside the parlor door, her plump face flushed a mottled, panicked red.
She grabbed Brenda’s arm aggressively, her sharp fingernails digging painfully into the girl’s thin bicep.
She hissed a vicious warning, her breath smelling heavily of cheap peppermint and intense anxiety.
She commanded Brenda to look at the floor and speak only when spoken to.
She threatened to lock her in the freezing coal cellar until spring if she caused any embarrassment.
Brenda asked who the man was, her voice raspy and dry from complete disuse.
Megan snapped that he was Greg, the formidable Duke, and she had no idea why he was asking for a gutter rat.
Megan shoved the heavy door open and pushed Brenda roughly inside.
The parlor was a freezing room strictly reserved for the fragile illusion of respectability.
It contained the orphanage’s only rug, a threadbare Persian imitation, and two stiff armchairs that smelled strongly of mothballs.
Greg was standing by the empty fireplace, completely ignoring the freezing temperature of the room.
Up close, his sheer physical presence seemed to suck all the breathable air from the small space.
He smelled of rain soap, expensive leather, and a sharp, jarring wealth that heavily contrasted with the decay around him.
He turned slowly as the door clicked firmly shut behind her.
Megan had cowardice enough to leave them entirely alone.
Greg’s pale, striking gray eyes swept over Brenda with intense calculation.
He took in her wet apron, her cracked leather boots, and her defensive, rigid posture.
For a brief second, a muscle feathered violently in his tight jaw.
It wasn’t pity she saw in his harsh face.
It was anger.
A tight, restrained fury burned in his eyes, making Brenda’s pulse jump erratically in her throat.
But the anger wasn’t directed at her.
He stated her name in a low baritone, a voice rough around the edges like heavy velvet dragged over gravel.
Brenda kept her chin completely level, refusing to look at his boots no matter what the matron had violently commanded.
She acknowledged her name and bluntly asked if he was completely lost.
Greg didn’t smile at her dangerous insolence.
He simply stared at her and declared that he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
He reached slowly into the inner breast pocket of his tailored coat.
He told her he had spent the last three agonizing months looking everywhere for her.
Brenda crossed her arms defensively over her chest.
She was suddenly hyper-aware of how thin and pathetic her dress was, and how her wet knuckles throbbed in the cold.
She told him nobody looks for someone at the orphanage.
She told him people only leave things here so they never have to look at them again.
Greg acknowledged her statement with a completely flat, emotionless tone.
He pulled out a thick envelope of heavy, cream-colored parchment sealed with a cracked wax stamp.
He didn’t hand it to her immediately, turning it over slowly in his gloved hands.
He revealed that twenty-three years ago, a man had lowered her into a basket and left her on the freezing steps of this building.
That man had paid the matron a pathetic sum to keep her alive and to never ask his real surname.
Brenda’s stomach dropped violently.
A cold, sharp metallic taste flooded the back of her dry mouth.
She had spent two full decades telling herself she didn’t care where she came from.
She had built a massive emotional fortress of absolute, unyielding indifference.
But looking at this dangerous stranger in his immaculate tailoring, a hairline fracture appeared in her heavy walls.
She asked him why he was here, her voice completely devoid of the terrifying tremor she felt in her chest.
Greg stated bluntly that her father had died three weeks ago.
The sudden bluntness of his words felt like a solid physical blow to her ribs.
Greg admitted that the man had been his closest friend, and that he had been an utter coward.
Brenda stood perfectly still in the freezing room.
The grandfather clock in the corner ticked a hollow, rhythmic metronome of passing time.
The father she had never known, the invisible ghost she had fiercely cursed every time the winter wind blew through the cracks in her window, was dead.
She waited patiently for the grief to hit her.
She waited for the hot tears to spill over her eyelashes.
Instead, she felt a massive surge of violent, suffocating rage.
She repeated the word coward, rolling the bitter taste of it around on her tongue.
She asked Greg if he expected her to wear black and scrub the floors slower in a pathetic show of mourning.
Greg stepped closer, his sheer size proving incredibly intimidating in the small room.
But Brenda dug her worn heels into the threadbare rug and fiercely held her ground.
Greg lowered his voice, forcing her to listen to the heavy cadence of his words.
He revealed that her father was an immensely wealthy Earl.
He had been married to a high-born woman who could not bear any children.
Brenda was the tragic product of a quiet affair with a forgotten governess.
She was a massive scandal her father was too incredibly weak to face, yet too weak to completely discard.
Brenda stated bitterly that he threw her away but carefully kept the receipts.
Her throat felt exactly like dry sandpaper.
Greg agreed that it was a massive failure of duty, his voice surprisingly devoid of typical aristocratic condescension.
He declared that he was here to permanently rectify that massive failure.
He held out the thick envelope toward her chest.
He explained that her father left her everything that was not strictly entailed to his distant cousin.
She was now the sole owner of a massive townhouse in Mayfair, a sizable lifetime annuity, and a fully legitimized family name.
Brenda looked at the heavy, creamy paper bearing the crest of a dead man.
She looked down at her own hands resting defensively in front of her rough apron.
The fragile skin around her fingernails was peeling badly.
A dark, ugly bruise stained the webbing of her left thumb from a heavy coal scuttle.
She told Greg she didn’t want any of it.
Greg’s hand remained extended, and he didn’t even flinch.
He told her he didn’t care if she wanted it or not.
He commanded her to realize that she was a wealthy heiress now, and she was leaving this godforsaken place today.
Brenda’s voice cracked, rising in sudden, uncontrollable volume.
She screamed that he didn’t get to come into her miserable world and order her to take the bloody scraps of a man who left her to freeze.
Did he have any idea what twenty-three years of lye does to human skin, or what it sounded like when a sick child slowly died of the ague in a cot right next to you?
Brenda fiercely demanded he keep the dead man’s bloody money and hollow name.
Greg finally lowered his large, gloved hand.
A long, incredibly calculating stare was his only immediate response.
Instead of offering a single empty platitude or daring to tell her she was being irrational, he spoke in a dangerously calm tone.
Staying in this miserable place to scrub floors until her spine permanently curved and her raw hands rotted off was entirely her choice.
Rotting in a damp, miserable monument to a coward’s legacy would be her own tragic doing.
The only other option was to take his massive fortune, live in absolute luxury, and make his ghost pay for every single day she spent in this hell.
Greg placed the heavy envelope gently on the small, rickety side table.
He stated firmly that he would be waiting outside in the carriage.
He gave her exactly ten minutes to collect her pathetic belongings.
He turned sharply on his heel and walked toward the heavy door.
Pausing with his hand on the brass doorknob, he looked back over his broad shoulder.
He quietly admitted that he had told her father he would burn in hell for what he did.
He planned to ensure Brenda got a massive head start on spending his gold before he even got there.
The door clicked shut, leaving Brenda completely alone in the freezing parlor.
She stared intensely at the white envelope, her chest heaving with exertion.
She desperately wanted to tear it into a thousand tiny shreds.
She wanted to throw it directly into the unlit, dirty hearth.
Instead, she walked over to the table and picked it up.
It was incredibly heavy, feeling exactly like a forged iron anchor.
She shoved it deep into the deep pocket of her gray apron without even opening it.
Brenda owned exactly three things in the entire world.
She had a wool shawl that was far more holes than actual yarn.
She had a wooden comb missing more than half its brittle teeth.
And she had a small, incredibly smooth river stone she had found in the courtyard when she was seven.
She didn’t own the rough dress or the cracked boots she was wearing.
Those strictly belonged to the cruel parish.
But she definitely wasn’t going to walk out into the freezing mud naked.
It took her less than three minutes to pack her entire life.
She tied her few possessions into a small, pathetic square of faded linen.
When she walked back down the main stairs, a small crowd of orphans had silently gathered in the main hall.
They were children with deeply hollow cheeks and large, watchful, haunted eyes.
They didn’t speak a single word.
They just stared at her as if she were a ghost.
She had been a permanent fixture of their grim world, a solid piece of the architecture.
And now she was finally leaving.
Megan stood by the front door, looking like she had swallowed a lemon whole.
She eyed the pathetic linen bundle in Brenda’s hand with obvious greed.
She asked tightly if Brenda was taking the parish boots.
Brenda stared her down and stated coldly that she was indeed taking the boots.
She didn’t look back as she pushed aggressively past the older woman and shoved the heavy oak door open.
The freezing air hit her face like a solid physical slap.
The carriage was still there, the massive horses shifting restlessly in the cold.
Greg’s driver saw her and quickly opened the door, a look of brief, poorly concealed shock crossing his face.
Brenda didn’t wait for him to offer a polite hand.
She grabbed the door frame with her scarred hands and hauled herself violently up into the carriage.
The interior was a jarring, overwhelming assault on all her senses.
The thick seats were beautifully upholstered in deep, plush charcoal velvet.
The floor was completely covered in a thick, luxurious carpet that swallowed the mud from her boots.
It was incredibly warm inside.
A small brass brazier sat securely in the corner, radiating a wonderful, gentle heat.
The entire space smelled strongly of expensive tobacco, aged cedar, and immense wealth.
Greg was sitting quietly on the far side, his long legs stretched out casually.
He didn’t say a single word as she sat opposite him.
She clutched her sad linen bundle tightly to her chest like a protective shield.
The driver slammed the door shut, sealing them inside the warm space.
The carriage lurched smoothly forward, the heavy wheels rolling powerfully over the uneven cobblestones.
Brenda looked quietly out the glass window.
The bleak, gray brick facade of the orphanage slid past the frame.
It looked smaller and sadder than it ever had from the inside.
She waited desperately for relief to wash over her tired bones.
She waited to finally feel like a wild bird freed from a terrible cage.
But her throat was completely tight, and her scarred hands simply wouldn’t stop shaking.
She looked down at the pristine velvet beneath her calloused, scabbed fingers.
The contrast was almost entirely obscene.
She felt intensely dirty.
She felt like a filthy intruder who had snuck into a pristine museum and was smearing grease on the priceless paintings.
Greg broke the heavy silence, his quiet voice easily filling the small space.
He told her there were thick blankets in the compartment beneath her seat if she was cold.
Brenda lied through her chattering teeth, claiming she was perfectly fine.
Greg reached down, pulled open a drawer beneath his own seat, and extracted a heavy, dark blue wool blanket.
Without asking permission, he tossed it gently across the carriage.
It landed warmly on her lap.
It was softer than anything she had ever touched in her entire life.
Brenda stared at it, then looked up at his hard face.
She asked him why her father had done it.
Greg met her intense gaze, refusing to look away from the raw, angry redness of her tired eyes.
He explained that her father was a man who prized his own comfort above absolutely everything else.
His wealthy wife brought him immense status and a highly respected title.
The forgotten governess had only brought him a brief escape from a marriage he actively despised.
When her mother tragically died in childbirth, Brenda became a massive problem he couldn’t solve without losing his comfort.
So he cowardly paid a cruel woman to lock his daughter in the dark.
Greg’s voice tightened with obvious, restrained disgust.
He admitted he had known about the affair, but he was told the child had died alongside the mother.
He didn’t find out the terrible truth until his friend was on his deathbed, heavily dosed on laudanum, confessing his sins.
Greg leaned forward slightly, resting his massive forearms on his knees.
The small space between them felt intensely charged, thick with the heavy weight of twenty-three years of lies.
He confessed that when he heard what the man had done, he had nearly choked the last breath out of him himself.
Brenda turned her head to look out the window as the bleak, soot-stained streets gave way to cleaner brick and wider roads.
She realized she wasn’t a fairy tale princess being magically rescued by a handsome lord.
She was a living, breathing stain on a noble family’s reputation.
She was the undeniable evidence of a dead man’s cowardice.
She closed her eyes and let the intense warmth of the carriage completely seep into her frozen bones.
Tomorrow, she would logically figure out how to hate them all properly.
Today, she just wanted to permanently stop shivering.
The carriage eventually stopped with a gentle lurch that rattled her teeth.
Outside the frosted glass, the oppressive, soot-choked air of the East End had been entirely replaced by wide, sweeping pavements.
The gaslit glow of Mayfair cast long, elegant shadows across the clean street.
The air here completely lacked the metallic tang of blood from the slaughterhouses and the heavy sourness of unwashed bodies.
It smelled beautifully of wet stone, expensive coal smoke, and cold, clean rain.
Greg announced their arrival, pushing the heavy door open before the driver could even climb down.
Brenda didn’t move an inch.
Her freezing fingers were locked in a total death grip around her pathetic linen bundle.
The house looming beyond the carriage window was absolutely terrifying.
It was massive, built of pristine white stone with wrought-iron balconies.
The heavy mahogany door looked thick enough to completely withstand a military siege.
Warm, yellow light spilled invitingly from the ground floor windows, cutting sharply through the dense London fog.
It wasn’t a home.
It was a heavily fortified fortress, and she was an uninvited invader.
Greg stepped down onto the damp pavement and turned back, politely holding out a large, gloved hand.
She completely ignored it.
Brenda clutched her bundle, scooted to the very edge of the velvet seat, and dropped clumsily to the ground.
Her worn boots hit the clean cobblestones with a dull, heavy thud.
Greg simply dropped his hand, turned, and led the way up the wide, sweeping stone steps.
The front door opened before he even reached the polished brass knocker.
A footman in a sharp black coat bowed low, his face a perfect mask of practiced neutrality.
Then a stern woman stepped forward into the warm gaslight.
She wore a severe gray dress, a heavy ring of iron keys dangling from her waist.
Her hair was pulled back so tightly it looked physically painful.
She greeted the Duke crisp and professionally, completely unprepared for the sight of the girl behind him.
The professional mask violently slipped from her face.
Brenda watched the woman’s pupils dilate as she took in the matted hair, the dirt-smeared cheek, and the frayed, sodden hem.
The housekeeper’s nose gave a microscopic, disgusted twitch.
She could definitely smell the damp wool and the stale, lingering lye.
Brenda fiercely lifted her chin.
She intentionally shifted her weight, letting the heavy mud from her boots scrape audibly against the pristine marble floor.
Greg’s voice cut sharply through the quiet, suffocating horror of the grand foyer.
He introduced her as the absolute owner of this massive house.
He commanded the terrified housekeeper to treat her with the exact deference she afforded the late Earl.
The woman swallowed hard, her throat working anxiously as she welcomed the new mistress.
The polite words tasted exactly like dry ash in her mouth.
Greg ordered the hottest bath possible to be drawn in the main guest quarters.
He brutally commanded the servants to burn whatever clothes Brenda left on the floor.
Brenda snapped back instantly, her loud voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling.
She fiercely told them not to touch her things, dropping her tone to a low, territorial growl.
Greg looked at her intensely, then calmly ordered the housekeeper to launder the clothes instead.
Twenty minutes later, Brenda was standing alone in a room larger than the entire dormitory at the orphanage.
A massive copper tub sat before a roaring fireplace, radiating glorious, intense heat.
Steam plumed into the air, carrying the wonderful scent of lavender and milled soap.
She completely banished the nervous maids who tried to help her wash.
Slowly, with stiff, freezing fingers, she untied the coarse string of her heavy apron.
She let the wool dress fall to the floor in a sad, gray heap.
She caught sight of her full reflection in the tall standing mirror.
She was a complete stranger.
Her collarbones protruded like sharp weapons, and her knees were a mottled map of dark bruises.
Her hands were the absolute worst, raw, angry, and violently red.
She hated the mirror and turned her back to it entirely.
She stepped carefully into the scalding water, letting the heat bite into her frozen calves.
She sat perfectly still, letting the hot water draw the deep, twenty-year chill directly from her marrow.
She grabbed a bristled brush and scrubbed her skin until it turned a violently angry pink.
The water in the copper tub slowly turned completely gray, just like her bucket at the orphanage.
The massive feather mattress was an undeniable enemy.
Brenda had desperately tried to sleep in the huge four-poster bed, but the ticking was entirely too soft.
Every time she closed her tired eyes, the sensation of sinking sent a sharp spike of pure panic through her chest.
Sometime around three in the morning, she dragged a heavy quilt onto the thick Persian rug near the fire.
Her curved spine finally settled into the rigid, familiar resistance of the hard floorboards.
When sunlight finally pierced the heavy velvet drapes, she woke with a stiff neck and a parched mouth.
The stealthy maids had left a dark forest green wool dress draped carefully over a chair.
She pulled it over her head, completely ignoring the intricate, restrictive corset they had also provided.
She refused to let whalebone finish the job of suffocating her.
She wandered barefoot out of the massive bedroom, trailing her damaged hand along the expensive silk wallpaper.
She found Greg in the vast dining room, sitting at a table that could easily seat twenty people.
He was reading a broadsheet, looking entirely unbothered by her feral appearance.
He bluntly informed her that a shoemaker and a dressmaker were arriving shortly.
Brenda fiercely crossed her arms, demanding to know when she could finally leave this terrible trap.
Greg stood up slowly, pouring her a cup of dark, steaming coffee.
He told her she wasn’t a prisoner, and that she held the deed to this massive house and a staggering fortune.
He also told her the brutal truth about the wolves circling outside.
Her father’s terrible cousin, Craig, was furious that the unentailed wealth had gone to a bastard daughter.
He was already planning to contest the will and drag her name through the mud to prove she was an impostor.
Greg pressed the warm porcelain cup into her raw hands, his rough calluses brushing gently against her skin.
He promised to act as her shield against the vicious society that would try to tear her apart.
Later that afternoon, the suffocating silence of the massive house drove Brenda to desperately wander the ground floor.
She pushed open a solid oak door and stepped into an incredibly stale, dark-paneled study.
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined three walls, stuffed with beautiful, leather-bound volumes that looked entirely unread.
This was the exact room where her father had cowardly managed his comfortable life.
A massive, claw-footed desk sat squarely in the center of the room.
Brenda stared up at the large oil portrait hanging directly behind the chair.
The man in the painting had a weak, receding chin and watery, indistinct blue eyes.
He didn’t look like a towering demon at all.
He looked soft, vapid, and incredibly harmless.
A massive surge of hot, sour bile rose sharply in her throat.
She had spent twenty-three years creating a terrifying villain in her head, and he was just a weak man in a silk waistcoat.
She needed to see something entirely real.
She grabbed the brass handle of the top drawer and yanked it open violently.
Inside lay a heavy, black leather ledger.
Brenda pulled it out and dropped it heavily onto the pristine blotter.
She flipped it open, her eyes scanning the neat, cramped columns of numbers and dates.
Her scarred finger stopped dead on an entry for April twelfth.
St. Agnes Parish.
Sixteen shillings.
It was a microscopic, entirely insignificant drip of copper and silver to keep the matron happy.
It was significantly less than what he spent on a new horse saddle.
That was the exact price of her existence.
She didn’t hear Greg enter the room until he spoke softly from right behind her.
He told her that her father had kept the ledger in the top drawer and looked at it every single month.
Brenda’s voice sounded thin and brittle as she whispered the pathetic amount out loud.
She let out a harsh, jagged laugh, clawing its way painfully out of her tight throat.
She told Greg that the matron had used those sixteen shillings to buy cheap gin.
She had locked the orphans in the freezing cellar when she drank it so she wouldn’t have to hear them crying.
The sudden, terrifying realization snapped the last frayed wire in Brenda’s mind.
She grabbed the heavy crystal inkwell from the desk and hurled it violently at the fireplace.
The heavy glass exploded with a deafening crash against the brick hearth.
Black ink rained across the pristine marble, splashing against the brass fender like a spray of arterial blood.
Shards of sharp glass skittered dangerously across the expensive Persian rug.
Brenda stood panting heavily, her raw hands balled into extremely tight fists.
Greg didn’t yell, and he didn’t call the terrified servants.
He walked straight over the broken glass, pouring a large measure of amber whiskey into a tumbler.
He pressed the glass firmly into her trembling hand, wrapping his large fingers over hers to steady it.
He told her to drink it and burn her throat with it.
He promised that tomorrow, she would start taking every single thing the coward had left behind.
Brenda swallowed the fiery liquid and finally let out a jagged, broken sob.
Two weeks later, the massive chancery court threat loomed over them like a heavy guillotine.
Brenda stood rigidly in the center of the opulent drawing room, wearing a dark plum broadcloth dress.
The high collar choked her gently, serving as a constant reminder to keep her chin perfectly level.
Craig paced across the parquet floor, tapping his silver-tipped cane frantically against the wood.
He smelled heavily of souring bay rum and the sharp, metallic tang of old sweat.
Beside him, his nervous solicitor shuffled dry parchment with trembling hands.
Greg stood silently by the large window, casting a long, intimidating shadow across the room.
The solicitor droned on, claiming they were going to freeze all the assets until a full trial.
Craig leaned forward eagerly, offering her a pathetic sum for passage to America if she signed away her claim.
Brenda looked at his wet, eager lower lip, and her stomach completely turned.
She turned her back on him, walked deliberately to the study to retrieve the black leather ledger, and returned to the drawing room.
Sitting rigidly at a small writing desk, she dropped the heavy book squarely onto the center of the wood.
She commanded the solicitor to turn to page forty-two and read the entry for April twelfth.
The man adjusted his glasses and read the pathetic sixteen shillings aloud.
Brenda stood up slowly, the heavy chair shrieking loudly against the floorboards.
She walked around the desk, stopping a mere foot away from her terrified cousin.
She told him her father was a coward, but she was definitely not.
She revealed that Megan was currently sitting in the estate kitchen, bought and paid for by Greg.
She had brought the very black wool cloak Brenda was wrapped in as an infant.
The family crest stitched into the lining was perfectly intact, serving as undeniable proof of her bloodline.
Greg stepped away from the window, stopping right beside Brenda.
He told Craig that if he proceeded with the suit, they would expose his cowardly family and ruin him completely.
Craig’s face flushed a sickly, waxen yellow as he realized he was entirely trapped.
Brenda leaned in incredibly close, letting him see the permanent lye scars on her jawline.
She told him to take his hollow title, but this massive house and the fortune were permanently hers.
She promised to ruin him entirely if he ever set foot in London again.
Craig didn’t say a single word as he grabbed his cane and limped frantically out of the room.
The solicitor scrambled desperately after him, slamming the heavy oak door shut behind them.
Brenda finally turned away from the door and looked down at the massive black ink stain on the hearth.
It was a permanent monument to the day she shattered the illusion of her father.
Greg walked over and stood incredibly close, his heat a solid grounding weight in the freezing void of her chest.
He cupped the side of her jaw with his large, calloused hand.
His thumb brushed gently over the raised, damaged skin beneath her cheekbone.
He told her she was not broken by the slums, but permanently forged by them.
Brenda closed her eyes and leaned into his warm touch.
She had survived the freezing dark, and now, she owned the absolute light.
THE END
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Disclaimer
This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. If you would like to share your story, please send it to [email protected].
