He grinned.

Chapter 12 — The Wrong Stepdaughter

I have thought, many times since, about the scale of my stepmother’s miscalculation, because it is almost instructive in its completeness.

Wendy had a problem: an audit that could expose her, held by a stepdaughter she could not fully control.

And in trying to solve that problem, she chose the single worst possible method.

She could have tried to buy my silence.

She could have tried to frighten me quietly, or to discredit me slowly, or simply to keep ignoring me and hope I never looked too closely.