Chapter 2 - THE HOUSE MY FATHER LEFT ME
My adoptive father, Henry Bennett, was a mechanic.
Not wealthy.
Not influential.
Not the kind of man who appeared in business magazines.
He owned a small repair shop in Queens and worked six days a week.
He adopted me when I was nine.
I had spent the first years of my life moving between temporary homes.
Henry was the first person who told me I could stay.
Permanently.
He taught me how to fix a bicycle chain.
How to change a tire.
How to make pancakes without burning them.
And how to recognize a lie.
“People who love you don't need to frighten you into agreeing with them,” he used to say.
I remembered that sentence now.
Sitting in a jail cell.
Accused of a crime I hadn't committed.
With a husband who wanted to trade my freedom for his mistress's.
Henry died five years before I married Callahan.
He left me the house.
And a small savings account.
I never cared about the money.
The house was enough.
It was the only place in the world where I had always felt wanted.
Now Callahan wanted it.
And for the first time, I wondered whether he had married me because he loved me.
Or because he believed I had nobody powerful enough to protect me.
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He was wrong.
But he didn't know that yet.
