Surgical.
Simon looked at me and nodded once, a small motion that felt like permission.
My cue.
I set the unsigned envelope on the coffee table. The paper looked so harmless there, like it wasn’t capable of destroying someone’s life.
“No,” I said softly.
My voice didn’t shake. That surprised me. I’d been shaking internally for hours, but the word came out clean and steady.
“You’ll be signing something today,” I continued, my gaze moving from my mother to my father to Brooke, “but it won’t be that.”
Brooke scoffed, trying to find her confidence again. “You can’t force us.”
Simon raised a hand, not dramatic, just factual. “Actually,” he said, “she can.”
From his briefcase, he pulled out a new set of documents. Clean. Crisp. Devastating in their simplicity.
He slid them across the table toward my parents.
“Formal resignation of trustee rights,” Simon said. “Effective immediately. Failure to sign will trigger a court audit of every account you’ve touched in the last fifteen years.”
My father’s face twisted. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Simon met his stare without blinking. “Try me.”
My mother’s hands began to shake violently as she stared at the paperwork. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. The mask of control slipped, revealing a frightened woman beneath it—a woman who’d spent years playing the role of mother without ever understanding what it demanded.
“Alyssa,” she whispered, tears springing fast as if she could conjure them like a spell. “Please. We were only trying to—”
“To steal from me,” I cut in quietly.
The sentence hung in the air, sharp and undeniable.
“And to humiliate me,” I added, my eyes sliding to Brooke’s phone. “To record me breaking.”
Brooke’s cheeks flushed. “That was just—”
