It was scalding, burning her lips slightly.
“That’s not a bad idea at all.”
Her mother-in-law looked up sharply, clearly surprised.
“Do you really think so?”
“Of course. If you genuinely need money, that’s the logical option. Downsize and pocket the difference.”
Ms. Sterling went quiet, obviously expecting something completely different from this conversation.
Then she smiled, but the smile was crooked and didn’t reach her cold eyes.
“Yes, I suppose so… for now. Maybe I don’t actually have to sell it just yet. Maybe there’s another way to solve my problems.”
She stopped talking abruptly, staring at Kiana with obvious expectation.
Darius was watching her too now, his eyes intense.
Both of them were waiting—waiting for the daughter-in-law to offer to help, to say something like, “Don’t sell your home. Here, take some money. Live in peace.”
Kiana finished her tea in one long swallow and stood up.
“I’m going to change out of my work clothes. It’s been a long day.”
She left the kitchen feeling their two gazes burning into her back—one bewildered and frustrated, one angry and calculating.
In the bedroom, she closed the door firmly and sat on the edge of the bed.
Her hands were trembling slightly, not from fear but from cold, quiet, grinding rage.
They wanted her money. It was completely obvious now.
Ms. Sterling hadn’t come over for tea and pleasant conversation.
She’d come to scope out the situation carefully, to see if her daughter-in-law would succumb to guilt and pity.
And Darius was fully in on it, sitting right there silent and complicit, waiting.
Kiana stood up and moved quietly to the door, opening it just a crack.
The voices in the kitchen started up again, quieter now, more urgent and muffled.
She pressed her ear close to the gap and listened intently.
“She won’t give us anything,” Ms. Sterling hissed venomously. “She’s greedy and selfish.”
“Mom, don’t say that. She’s just cautious with money,” Darius muttered weakly.
“Cautious.”
She snorted with contempt.
“She has over a hundred thousand dollars just sitting there doing nothing, and I’m rotting away on Social Security, barely surviving.”
“Quiet. She’ll hear us,” Darius warned in a harsh whisper.
“Let her hear. I don’t care anymore. I raised you completely by myself your whole life. Your father left when you were only three years old. I worked two jobs for years, and now you marry this cold piece of work and you can’t even help your own mother properly.”
Darius mumbled something unintelligible in response.
“We have to act,” Ms. Sterling hissed with determination. “Do you understand me? Otherwise we won’t get anything. She’s not stupid. Look how cleverly she twisted things. ‘Sell your condo,’ she says. Easy for her to say when she has everything she needs.”
“So what exactly are you suggesting?”
A heavy pause filled with tension.
Kiana held her breath, her heart pounding.
“I was thinking maybe you could get the PIN code for her bank card,” Ms. Sterling said quietly. “You have access to her purse, right? Check it tonight. The card is in there. Then I’ll withdraw all the money quickly before she even notices anything’s wrong. And in the morning, we’ll just say the card was stolen—maybe on the bus or at the grocery store.”
Silence so thick Kiana could hear her own heartbeat thundering in her ears.
“Are you serious?” Darius’s voice was tense, but not indignant—more intrigued, almost excited.
“Absolutely serious. Listen carefully. She won’t even notice right away because she’s not checking her account every day. She’s got over a hundred and twenty thousand sitting there. What’s the big deal if we take it? We’ll split it later—half for you, half for me. That’s completely fair, right?”
Another pause.
“I don’t know, Mom. That sounds really risky.”
“Risky? What risk is there really? She won’t even figure it out for days. And even if she does somehow, so what? You’ll just say you didn’t know anything about it. You’ll say a hacker compromised the account. That happens all the time these days.”
“What if she calls the bank immediately?”
“So what if she does? The bank will just shrug their shoulders. Security failure, they’ll say. But the card was in her possession. No one but her knew the PIN code. She’ll end up blaming herself for not being more careful. Trust me, it’ll be absolutely fine.”
Kiana slowly, carefully closed the door without making a sound.
Everything inside her had frozen into solid ice.
She wasn’t surprised—not really.
For some reason, she wasn’t surprised at all.
She’d known Ms. Sterling was capable of a lot, but for Darius to actively support it, to go along with stealing from his own wife—that was the real blow.
Not a devastating blow, but a precise one that hit exactly where it would hurt most.
She returned to the bed, sat down carefully, and folded her hands in her lap.
She needed to think clearly, weigh all her options, decide what to do next.
But the decision had essentially been made already, days ago when she’d walked into that bank.
That morning, standing on those bank steps, Kiana had smiled faintly, barely noticeably.
Let them try, she’d thought.
And now they were about to.
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