“The immediate access accounts activate today,” Walter explained. “Five million dollars for your personal use while the trust is being finalized. Your grandmother wanted to ensure you had resources right away.”
Five million dollars for immediate use. I felt dizzy.
“There’s more,” Grandma Dorothy said, her eyes sharp. “Your family will try to contest this. They’ll claim undue influence, diminished capacity—anything they can think of. We need to be prepared.”
“What can they actually do?” I asked.
Walter leaned forward. “Legally, not much. Miss Dorothy has documentation proving her sound mind, including evaluations from three separate doctors. The will is ironclad. However, they can make the process difficult, drag it out in court, and create negative publicity.”
“Let them try,” Grandma Dorothy said firmly. “I’ve been documenting their treatment of Rachel for years. Every cruel comment, every exclusion, every incident of financial abuse. If they want a court battle, I’ll bury them with evidence.”
My phone buzzed again. Victoria. I silenced it.
“There’s something else you need to know,” Grandma Dorothy said, and something in her tone made me tense. “Your adoption wasn’t quite what you think it was.”
The room seemed to tilt. “What do you mean?”
She pulled a folder from her desk drawer, sliding it across to me. “When Patricia and Gregory adopted you, they received a substantial sum of money. Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to be exact. It was meant to cover your care, education, everything you’d need growing up.”
I stared at the documents in the folder: bank statements, transfer records. “They took money for adopting me?”
“From a trust set up by your birth parents,” Grandma Dorothy confirmed. “They died in a car accident when you were five. They’d established a trust to ensure you were cared for. Patricia and Gregory were approved as adoptive parents and given access to those funds.”
My hands shook as I flipped through the papers. Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And I’d worn secondhand clothes, gone to community college on student loans, and been told the family couldn’t afford to help me.
“They spent it all,” I whispered, seeing the account statements. Vacations, cars, Victoria’s private school tuition, Kenneth’s college fund. They spent my money on everyone but me.
“Yes,” Grandma Dorothy said quietly. “I only discovered this myself two years ago. I’ve been investigating since then, gathering evidence. That’s theft, Rachel. They stole from a child.”
The betrayal cut deeper than anything else. It wasn’t just cruelty or favoritism. They’d profited from my loss, taken money meant for my care, and used it to spoil their biological children while treating me like a burden.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked.
“Because I needed to be sure. I needed all the documentation to be perfect and legal. And because…” She paused, looking older suddenly. “Because I knew that once you learned the truth, there would be no going back. Your relationship with them, toxic as it was, would be over completely.”
She was right. Any tiny part of me that had hoped for reconciliation, that had wondered if maybe I was too sensitive or ungrateful, died in that moment. They hadn’t just been cruel; they’d been criminals.
“What do I do?” I felt lost, overwhelmed.
“You let me handle it,” Grandma Dorothy said. “Walter has already filed a civil suit against Patricia and Gregory for misappropriation of trust funds. With interest over 22 years, they owe you approximately $2.3 million.”
My phone exploded with calls again. This time, it was my father.
“Answer it,” Grandma Dorothy said. “Put it on speaker. Let’s hear what he has to say.”
With shaking hands, I accepted the call. “Rachel,” Gregory’s voice was desperate. “Rachel, please, we need to talk. Your grandmother isn’t thinking clearly.”
“She seems perfectly clear to me,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.
“This is insane. You can’t possibly think you deserve her entire fortune. You’ve been with us for 22 years, and suddenly you turn on us the moment money is involved?”
“The moment money is involved?” I repeated. “You mean like the $750,000 you took for adopting me? The money you spent on everyone except me?”
Silence. Then, “I don’t know what lies she’s been telling you.”
“Bank records don’t lie, Dad.” The word felt bitter. “Walter has all the documentation. You stole from me. You both did.”
Patricia’s voice came through the phone, shrill with panic. “That money was for raising you, for housing you, feeding you!”
“You gave me hand-me-downs and made me pay my own way through college,” I said. “Meanwhile, Victoria got designer clothes and a full ride to a private university. Kenneth got a new car at 16. I got nothing.”
“You’re being ungrateful,” Gregory tried. “We gave you a home.”
“You gave me a prison,” I said. The words felt powerful, liberating. “You made me feel worthless every single day, and you did it while spending money that was meant for me.”
“We’ll fight this,” Patricia threatened. “We’ll take you to court.”
“Please do,” Grandma Dorothy cut in. “I’d love to see you explain the financial records to a judge, explain how you took money meant for a grieving five-year-old and spent it on luxury vacations.”
The call ended abruptly. They’d hung up, probably to call their own lawyer.
Walter placed a hand on my shoulder. “Miss Rachel, I know this is overwhelming, but you need to understand. You hold all the cards here. They have no legal ground to stand on.”
“They’ll try anyway,” I said.
“Of course they will,” Grandma Dorothy agreed. “But they’ll lose. And when they do, you’ll never have to see them again.”
Three days later, the story hit the media. Somehow, and I suspected Victoria was behind it, the details of Grandma Dorothy’s will change had leaked to the press. “Billionaire Disinherits Family for Adopted Granddaughter,” screamed the headlines. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing with reporters wanting statements.
I’d moved into Grandma Dorothy’s estate temporarily, unable to face my apartment where my family knew the address. Thomas had retrieved my things, and I was living in a strange bubble of luxury and chaos.
The public reaction was divided. Some praised Grandma Dorothy for rewarding character over blood. Others called me a manipulative gold digger who’d seduced an elderly woman for her fortune. The comment sections were brutal.
“She must have been sleeping with the old woman’s lawyer or something.”
“Gold digger alert. This girl knew exactly what she was doing.”
“Good for Dorothy. Family isn’t blood, it’s how you treat people.”
“That adopted girl is going to blow through billions in a year. Watch.”
I tried to ignore it, but the words burrowed under my skin. Was I wrong to accept this? Should I have refused Grandma Dorothy’s gift?
“Stop reading those,” Grandma Dorothy said, finding me hunched over my laptop in the library. She looked frailer than she had days ago, the cancer clearly progressing. “People will always have opinions. Let them talk.”
“They’re calling me terrible things,” I said.
“They called me terrible things when I built my first company,” she replied, settling into the chair beside me. “Said I was too aggressive, too masculine, too ambitious. That a woman couldn’t possibly succeed in pharmaceuticals. I proved them wrong.”
She took my hand, her grip weaker now. “You’ll prove them wrong too, Rachel. Not by defending yourself, but by being exactly who you are: kind, hardworking, and principled.”
That afternoon, Walter arrived with news. “Patricia and Gregory have officially filed to contest the will. They’re claiming diminished capacity and undue influence.”
“Let me see,” Grandma Dorothy said. Walter handed over the legal documents. I read over her shoulder, my anger building with every word. They claimed I’d isolated Grandma Dorothy from her family, that I’d manipulated a sick, elderly woman, that I’d taken advantage of her declining mental state.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “I didn’t even know about the cancer until that night.”
“We have evidence proving otherwise,” Walter assured me, “including testimony from medical staff, friends, and business associates. They’re grasping at straws.”
But something in Walter’s expression made me nervous. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He exchanged a glance with Grandma Dorothy. “Victoria has hired a private investigator. They’re digging into your background, looking for anything they can use against you.”
My stomach dropped. “There’s nothing to find.”
“We know that,” Grandma Dorothy said. “But they’ll try to create something, twist innocent situations, take things out of context.”
As if on cue, my phone rang. An unknown number. Against my better judgment, I answered.
“Rachel, it’s so good to finally reach you.” The voice was unfamiliar, syrupy sweet. “I’m Jennifer Cole from Seattle Scene Magazine. I’d love to chat about your relationship with Dorothy.”
“No comment,” I said, moving to hang up.
“Wait. I just have a few questions about the allegations.”
“What allegations?”
“About your business. There are questions about where you got your startup capital. Some people are suggesting Dorothy funded it years ago, that you’ve been planning this takeover for a long time.”
My blood ran cold. “That’s not true. I built my business with my own money.”
“Can you prove that? Do you have documentation?”
I hung up, my hands shaking.
“They’re trying to create a narrative,” Walter said grimly, “that you’ve been grooming Dorothy for years. That everything you’ve accomplished was really her money.”
“But it wasn’t. I have loan documents, business records.”
“We know,” Grandma Dorothy soothed. “And we’ll prove it. But Rachel, you need to prepare yourself. This is going to get worse before it gets better.”
She was right. By evening, social media was flooded with theories. Anonymous accounts, probably my family, were spreading rumors that I’d failed out of community college (I’d graduated with honors), that my business was failing (it was thriving), and that I’d had multiple affairs with wealthy older men (I’d barely dated in years). The cruelest rumor was that I’d somehow caused my birth parents’ death to access their trust fund. I was five years old when they died. But facts didn’t matter to internet trolls.
I closed my laptop, feeling sick.
“Miss Rachel?” Thomas appeared at the library door. “There are reporters at the gate. Quite a few of them.”
I walked to the window overlooking the front of the estate. News vans lined the street, their cameras pointed at the house. My private life was now a public spectacle.
“This is what they want,” I said quietly. “They want me to crack, to do something that makes me look bad.”
“Then don’t give them the satisfaction,” Grandma Dorothy said. She looked exhausted, but her eyes were still fierce. “We fight this the right way: with truth, with evidence, with dignity.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept replaying moments from my childhood: Patricia telling me I was lucky they’d taken me in, Victoria laughing when I didn’t get invited to her birthday party, Kenneth pushing me into the pool at a family gathering while everyone laughed. Every moment of exclusion, every casual cruelty, all building to this moment.
