Chapter 1
"Sirena, why is there only one hundred dollars left on our main card?" Francis Rowe's voice trembled as he stared at his phone.
The cold white glow from the banking app lit up his face, his expression full of disbelief.
He stood frozen by the dining table, like a puppet stripped of its strings.
In front of me was a bowl of chicken soup I'd gotten up at six to make. It was still steaming. I scooped up a spoonful, blew on it, and took a bite. It was just right.
"My sister's desperate for that money. She needs it right now!" Francis's voice shot up, hoarse with urgency when I didn't react.
"Hurry up and check. Maybe the bank system's messed up? Or did you forget about some big automatic payment?" he pressed, his words tumbling out. "Or did you get the cards mixed up?"
I set down my spoon, the metal handle hitting the glass table with a sharp "ding" that echoed through the room.
"The money?" I finally looked up at him, my eyes steady. His brows were twisted together, sweat breaking out at his temples—he looked totally frazzled.
"Didn't you withdraw all of it in one go ten days ago?" I asked.
Francis froze, like someone had hit the pause button on him.
"I took it?" Francis echoed, almost robotically, his eyes full of confusion. "I just withdrew 420 thousand dollars to pay off Karen's online loans."
"Yeah, you handled the 420 thousand dollars yourself." I nodded, calmly wiping my mouth with a napkin.
"What about the rest?" Francis pressed, darting around the table and practically shoving his phone in my face.
"After that? There was nothing else," I replied, my tone flat.
"No way! There was over 920 thousand dollars left on the card!" Francis shouted, his voice cracking. "How is there only 100 hundred dollars left?"
He jabbed at the screen so hard the phone shook. "Look at this! Balance: 120 dollars! What the hell happened?"
I reached out and pushed his phone away with two fingers, slow but firm.
"Francis, our platinum card had a total of 1.4 million dollars in it," I said.
"Ten days ago, you went to several branches—both tellers and ATMs—and made five withdrawals, taking out 420 thousand dollars in total.
"First withdrawal: 9:45 AM, River City Road Branch VIP room, 150 thousand dollars.
"Second withdrawal: 11:05 AM, North City Branch counter, 100 thousand dollars.
"Third withdrawal: 1:30 PM, Metro Mall ATM, 70 thousand dollars.
"Fourth and fifth withdrawals: between 3 and 4 PM, you took out 42 thousand dollars from each of two self-service branches."
As I spoke, Francis's eyes kept widening, his breathing growing heavier. I slowed my words on purpose, hammering each number into his mind.
"After you took out 420 thousand dollars, there was still 920,800 dollars left on the card," I said.
"But over the past ten days, I withdrew 919,000 dollars," I added.
"Got a problem with that?" I asked.
The living room went dead silent, the only sound the ticking of that vintage wall clock we'd picked up in Berwick, marking every suffocating second.
We'd spent over 10 thousand dollars on that clock, and after five years, it still kept perfect time.
Francis's face went from ghostly pale to bright red, then greenish, and finally twisted into an ugly purple mess—like someone had knocked over a paint palette.
"What did you take the money out for?!" Francis finally snapped out of it, his voice echoing wildly through the high-ceilinged living room. "Why didn't you tell me first?!
"That's... that's money I worked my ass off for! It's our family's money!" he roared.
I folded the napkin neatly and set it in the corner of the table.
"You earned it?" I looked up at him, my gaze steady. After a few seconds, I gave a slight smile—cold, without a hint of warmth.
"Francis, I'm a senior analyst at a securities firm, pulling in 10 grand a month. You're a project manager at an engineering firm, making 12 grand a month.
"For the past five years, my paycheck has been kept with your mom for safekeeping.
"You told me we should pool our money so we could buy a luxury condo, and I believed you.
"So every month, I only kept 2,000 dollars as spending money, and the other 10,000 dollars was transferred directly to your mom's account.
"Five years, sixty months—that's 500 thousand dollars altogether.
"And with what you saved, that's how we ended up with 1.4 million dollars on that platinum card," I said.
I got up to clear the table, noticing his bowl of congee was still almost untouched.
"And then, when your sister Karen got herself into debt with online loans, you didn't even hesitate—you just transferred 420 thousand dollars out of our account," I said.