My mother-in-law dragged me to court, accusing me of pretending to be pregnant to snatch the inheritance. Then, right there in the courtroom, she lunged forward and kicked my stomach. “See? It’s all fake!” Gasps erupted. What she didn’t realize… the man behind the judge’s bench was my father. And in that instant, her case didn’t just fall apart. Her life did haj.

My father stood up, helping the medics lift me onto a gurney. He didn’t look at the press. He looked at the room with a lethal, sweeping gaze.

“My daughter,” he began, his voice booming through the hall like a cannon blast, “came to this city to build a life away from the shadow of my name. She wanted to know if a person could be loved for their soul rather than their inheritance. She found that love in Marcus Sterling. But she found something else in the Sterling family: a nest of vipers.”

He walked over to the plaintiff’s table and picked up the Sterling family’s financial filings. With one hand, he tore them in half.

“You thought she was a nameless orphan because she didn’t carry a purse made of gold. You thought she was weak because she was kind. But Elara is a Thorne. And in this state, the Thorne name doesn’t just mean money. It means the law.”