Inheritance and Betrayal

When I was sixteen, my mother remarried a man we’ll call Matt. He was 39 and came

with a son, James, who was a year older than me. My father had died

in a car accident years earlier, and everything he owned — his house, his savings,

his investments — had been left to me. He opened a bank account in my name

before he passed, and the inheritance was locked away safely. For months,

life with Matt seemed normal. He worked, my mother stayed home,

and James kept mostly to himself. But everything changed the moment Matt lost his job.

Suddenly the bills were “too high.” Suddenly I was “old enough to contribute.” And then one afternoon,