“I know that,” I said. “I booked the room months ago.”
“Yes,” she replied, her voice smooth and cold. “And now you won’t need it.”
There was a rustle on the other end. Then Genevieve’s voice came through, bright, tight, and already offended.
“Don’t make this dramatic,” she said. “Arthur’s family is coming. His partners are coming. His mother has invited half of Newport society. We talked it over, and it would be better if you didn’t come.”
For a moment, the apartment seemed to shrink around me.
“I’m your sister,” I said.
“That is exactly why this is hard,” Genevieve answered. “But it is also exactly why you need to understand.”
My mother took the phone back.
“Arthur’s family is very successful. Very polished. They care about presentation. Genevieve deserves one day without awkward questions.”
“Awkward questions about what?”
The pause that followed told me everything.
About my car.
About my clothes.
About the apartment they imagined around me.
About the job they had never bothered to understand.
On the middle monitor in front of me, a contract waited for my electronic signature. The document had already been reviewed by five law firms. The deal structure was clean. The buyer was Northbridge Global Capital, one of the most powerful investment groups in Manhattan. The price was ninety-one million dollars in cash for the education technology platform I had spent nine years building with my own hands.
None of them knew.
To them, I was still the daughter who drove an old sedan with a cracked dashboard and worked “little online jobs.”
Genevieve sighed.
