“Call them!” I choked out, hot tears finally spilling over my eyelashes. “Call them right now! I have the money!”
I was Evelyn Thorne, a senior partner at a top-tier architectural firm in Chicago. For the past twelve years, I had built a lucrative empire, and in the process, I had become the tireless, uncomplaining ATM for my mother, Eleanor, and my younger sister, Chloe. I funded their extravagant lifestyles, paid their luxury rent, and just days ago, I had financed their trip to Paris for Fashion Week. I had believed, with a pathetic, desperate naivety, that providing for them would eventually earn me the maternal love I so deeply craved.
My hands shaking violently, I pulled my smartphone from my heavy winter coat. I opened my banking app, navigating straight to the “Emergency Family Fund.” It was a joint account I had established years ago, strictly maintaining a balance of over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for absolute, life-or-death disasters exactly like this.
FaceID authenticated. The screen loaded.
I blinked, certain the tears blurring my vision were playing a cruel trick on me. I swiped down with a trembling thumb to refresh the page. The numbers remained identical.
My heart flatlined. I stared at the glowing screen, my brain entirely refusing to process the data. It was impossible. Where was the hundred and fifty thousand?
My eyes darted down to the recent transactions ledger. A massive, pending withdrawal had been processed less than an hour ago.
The oxygen was sucked from the room. Paris. Fashion Week.
My account hadn’t been hacked by a Russian syndicate. This wasn’t a banking glitch. While my son was writhing in agony on a rusted bed in the freezing Alaskan wilderness, my mother and sister had drained his lifeline to buy luxury goods.
The faint, pained whimpers escaping Julian’s lips drove me to the absolute brink of insanity. The doctor was frantically hanging a second bag of saline, trying to keep his blood pressure from bottoming out.56
