Chapter 1
“If you want to leave and say goodbye to your father, you'll have to crawl under my dog three times.”
Edwin said it with a smug smile, casually twirling the key to the front door between his fingers.
Beside him, a massive Caucasian Shepherd growled on the marble floor of their home in Bel Air.
It was 1:45 in the morning.
Outside, a vi0lent storm lashed Los Altos.
Inside, Camila had just received the phone call that sh:atter:ed her world. Her father, George Stanford, had d:ie:d suddenly from a massive heart at:tack.
“I have to go to the hospital,” she pleaded. “I just want to see him one last time.”
Edwin didn't even bother getting up after hearing the news. Adjusting his silk robe, he replied with obvious annoyance.
“Your father has been a burden for years. Besides, I have an important meeting tomorrow. I'm not driving out in this weather for a d:ea:d man who never did anything for me.”
Something inside Camila broke. For five years, she had endured her husband's constant in/sults, her mother-in-law Beverly's endless humiliation, and the thefts committed by her sister-in-law, Annika.
She had given up her career, cooked for everyone in the household, and accepted being called a freeloader.
She had even pretended not to notice another woman's perfume on Edwin's shirts or the messages he always hid whenever she walked into the room.
Everyone had mistaken her silence for weakness.
But that night, Edwin crossed the one line he never should have crossed.
Camila ran toward the front door.
Edwin caught up to her, locked it, and released the dog.
“Go ahead,” he said, pointing beneath the enormous animal. “Three times. Then I'll let you leave.”
The Caucasian Shepherd bared its teeth.
Camila stood perfectly still.
Edwin expected her to cry, beg, and humiliate herself the way she always had.
Instead, she slowly straightened her posture, adjusted her coat, and looked at him with a calm expression that sent a chill down his spine.
Then she pulled out her phone.
“Who are you calling?” he mocked. “The police? Your broke little friends?”
Camila dialed a number saved under the name “Attorney Wayne.”
“Activate Clause One,” she said the moment the call was answered. “Suspend Crestview Construction's line of credit immediately. Notify the bank that all guarantees are to be enforced, and send the legal team to the residence. Proceed according to my father's trust agreement.”
The smile vanished from Edwin's face.
“What are you talking about?”
Camila grabbed a heavy bronze sculpture and sl:amm:ed it against the door lock until it shattered.
Before stepping out into the pouring rain, she turned to face him one last time.
“This house, your company, your cars, even the chair you're sitting in pretending to be powerful, all exist because of my family's money. My father wasn't a bankrupt old man. He owned the business group that has kept you afloat all these years.”
Edwin's face turned deathly pale.
Camila opened the door.
May you like
“My father d:ie:d tonight,” she whispered. “But so did the wife who kept forgiving you.”
Three hours later, the bank froze Edwin's accounts, and an urgent notice was delivered to the company's board of directors.
