Chapter 4 - The Locks Are Changed
The ride in Eleanor’s chauffeured Maybach was completely silent until we crossed the Queensboro Bridge. I sat in the plush leather seat, staring out the window at the neon lights of Manhattan, holding my car keys tightly in my right hand.
“You’re shaking, my dear,” Eleanor said softly, reaching over to cover my hand with hers.
“I think the shock is finally wearing off,” I admitted, turning to look at her. “Grandma… are you really going to strip her of the trust management?”
“It was done the moment she pressed send on that text message, Arya,” Eleanor said, her eyes flashing with old, unyielding fire. “A woman who steals from her own blood to appease a spoiled favorite is not fit to manage a fifty-million-dollar estate. Victoria forgot where she came from. She forgot that strength isn’t about dominating those weaker than you—it’s about protecting what is right.”
“She’s going to hate me forever,” I whispered.
“Let her,” Eleanor replied firmly. “Her hatred is cheap. Her respect was never something you could buy, no matter how much of yourself you sacrificed. Tonight, you took your life back.”
When the chauffeur pulled up outside my apartment building in Long Island City, Eleanor looked at me with a sharp, calculating expression.
“Where is your spare key to the Honda?” she asked suddenly.
I froze. “My spare key? It’s… it was on the key rack inside my apartment.”
“Does your mother have a key to your apartment?”
My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit. My mother had a emergency key to my place. She had demanded it when I moved in two years ago, claiming it was for "building emergencies."
“Yes,” I breathed. “She does.”
“Drive your car into a secure, paid parking garage across town immediately,” Eleanor ordered. “Do not park it in your building’s garage tonight. And tomorrow morning at eight, I am sending a locksmith to rekey your front door.”
“You think she would try to take it back?”
“Victoria is cornered, Arya,” Eleanor warned. “A cornered narcissist doesn’t think logically. She thinks emotionally, and right now, her pride is bleeding. She will try to regain control of the narrative, and she will start by trying to minimize your victory.”
Eleanor was right.
I immediately called the valet at the Regency, retrieved my CR-V, and drove it directly to a high-security, subterranean facility six blocks away from my apartment, paying for a full month of private storage up front. I locked the vehicle, walked back to my building under the dim city streetlights, and went up to my apartment.
When I stepped into my living room, my breath hitched.
The front door had been unlocked.
I stepped slowly onto the hardwood floor, my heart hammering against my ribs. I reached for the light switch and flipped it on.
My apartment had been tossed.
Not by a burglar looking for electronics—my laptop and television were still sitting untouched on the desk.
The drawers of my hallway console had been yanked open and dumped on the floor. My file cabinet where I kept my car title documents, insurance policies, and spare keys had been pried open with a screwdriver. The spare key to the CR-V was gone.
May you like
And sitting right on the center of my kitchen island was a bright yellow sticky note written in my mother’s unmistakable, sharp cursive handwriting:
“You think you won tonight, Arya. But you forgot who raised you. We aren’t done.”
