Page 94 of What Goes Around

The day after my birthday, I had opened a new bank account under my name alone and redeemed the lottery ticket I’d been sitting on for months.

Forty-nine million dollars.

I didn’t tell anyone. Money like that wasn’t something you announced.

Money meant freedom.

Money meant no one in that house would ever hold power over me again.

That same afternoon, using online listings, I had rented a small apartment in Cambridge, fully furnished, month-to-month, close to MIT.

I needed somewhere to land once the graduation party was over, because if that night went the way I expected it to, staying under my father’s roof would no longer be an option.

And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

MIT started in the fall. Cambridge was where my life was heading. Renting there now made more sense than pretending I had a summer left in this town.

I told myself that was the only reason.

Nick coming back for the summer had nothing to do with it.

Amy called me a few hours later and asked to meet.

She said she’d found more information about my wonderful family.

Over the last few months, Amy had become one of the closest things I had to an ally. She was sharp, relentless, brilliant in ways most adults never noticed.

I changed into black tailored trousers, a fitted charcoal blazer over a soft gray top. A wool coat I loved and ankle boots. Minimal jewelry. Hair pulled back, clean and intentional.

On the walk there, I caught myself thinking about Apple, how I’d quietly collected evidence of her real nature.

At seventeen, Apple was already cruel, but not dangerous yet. She hadn’t reached the sell your sister to sex traffickers phase of her evolution.

For now, it was smaller things. Petty things.

Screenshots of her trashing her friends behind their backs.

Messages where she slept with boyfriends and then cried about “accidental feelings.” Threads she’d started on the school forum, rumors about me, about other girls. Just enough to fracture reputations without getting her hands dirty.

Regular high school drama.

Training wheels for the woman she would one day become.

I met Amy at a small café downtown. Amy waved from a corner booth. We ordered drinks, her iced latte, my black tea, and as soon as the waitress left, she slid her laptop onto the table and opened it.

“I think you’ll want to see this,” she said.

Emails.

Messages.

Call logs.

My father.

And his secretary.

I stared at the screen, my expression barely shifting.