My father had promised the company would go to whichever of us got into a top university.
I got into an Ivy League school, exactly as I'd wanted, and he kept his word and decided I would inherit Henson Corp.
But just as he was writing in the heir's name, the big screen above the banquet stage lit up with footage of me selling company secrets to our worst rival.
The whole room broke into an uproar. One mouth couldn't argue against hundreds.
My boyfriend, his face flushed with rage, dragged me outside and demanded an explanation.
By the time my friend rushed over to prove the video was an AI fake, my father's temper had already boiled over and he'd made my stepsister the heir instead.
He let out a sigh.
"Ah! Once the heir's name is written in, it can't be changed. Otherwise I'd have no authority over the staff below me."
I clenched my fists so hard they ached, then turned and walked out in a fury.
After that, I didn't speak to my father at all. He was so upset he fell ill.
I couldn't stand to see him like that, and I was ready to forgive him, when at the door of his hospital room I heard: "Sweetheart, there's no cunning like an old man's cunning."
Dad chuckled. "Marianne Henson isn't as clever as she is. Jane Rogers got into an Ivy League school, so she won't have a hard life either way. But Marianne can't get into a name university, and without the company to inherit, people would walk all over her."
"For that we have to thank Ronald Gilbert. Without him, we'd never have used that AI video to smear Jane and give Marianne an opening to slip through."
...
I stood frozen in the doorway, the blood in my body going cold.
My mind was a blank. Only my father's voice kept replaying in my ears, like a curse.
And the people inside apparently hadn't yet said the cruelest thing.
"By the way, you still haven't told Jane, have you?"
"Told her what?"
"The Gilberts only marry the Henson heir. Now that the inheritance is in Marianne's hands, it only stands to reason that Ronald marries my Marianne."
My father froze for a moment. He seemed to have forgotten about that.
Something flickered across his face, a trace of guilt, of wanting to make amends.
Since the last incident had all been a misunderstanding, one that left me slandered and stripped of my inheritance,
I thought that this time, surely my father wouldn't deal me another fatal blow. Surely he would try to make it up to me.
After all, before my mother died she had gripped his hand and made him swear to take care of me, to never let the Henson family's eldest daughter be wronged. I waited, heart in my throat, hoping he wouldn't veer off course. But Marianne only shook his arm. "Dad, actually, there's something I never told you. Ronnie and I have already slept together."
I went rigid, stunned as if I'd been struck by lightning.
My father stared at Marianne too, eyes wide.
"What's going on?"
"Doesn't that Gilbert boy like Jane? And they're already engaged..."
"Dad, would you please calm down?"
"The truth is, the one Ronnie loves is me. It's just that the elders forced him to marry my sister, and it's been agony for him."
"We've loved each other all along, and we couldn't be together. You of all people should understand that feeling."
"It's not so much that we did something to wrong my sister. It's that my sister used her position as the Henson heir to push me down at every turn, and forced Ronnie to marry her."
I forced Ronald to marry me? I forced him??
Hearing that, my father's anger drained away, replaced by tenderness.
"If that's really how it is, then Jane went too far. How could she bully my daughter like that?"
Mother and daughter clung to each other and wept.
My father sighed and phoned Ronald, telling him to come and explain everything.
I wanted to hear it for myself, the tone he'd use to describe me behind my back.
He arrived not long after, and I quickly ducked out of sight.
He was still wearing the shirt I'd given him the night of his eighteenth birthday.
