That night, my father raised his crystal glass and sealed my fate with four simple words. “Your brother deserves it.”
The entire room applauded the perfect heir, leaving me with nothing but their pity for my so‑called poor choices. They saw a failure.
What they were missing was the most important detail. The mansion they had just handed him was already leveraged to the hilt, and the person holding that debt was me. My name is Ava Perry, and for thirty‑three years I have existed in this family like a clerical error everyone was too polite to correct.
Tonight was supposed to be a celebration—a coronation, really—held in the dining room of my father’s estate in the Brookhaven neighborhood of Charlotte. It is a house designed to make you feel small. The ceilings are too high, the marble floors too cold, and the silence that hangs in the hallways is heavy enough to crush a person’s lungs.
I sat at the far end of the mahogany table, a piece of furniture that cost more than most people earn in a year. To my left sat my brother, Dylan. To my right sat his wife, Sloan.
And at the head of the table, presiding over the filet mignon and the vintage Cabernet, sat my father, Graham Perry—the patriarch, the founder of Redwood Ridge Development, the man who looked at his two children and saw one investment and one liability. The dinner had been an exercise in performative happiness. The air‑conditioning hummed a low, expensive note, keeping the humid North Carolina air at bay, while the mood inside was frigid.
Sloan was doing most of the talking, which was typical. She had a way of weaponizing conversation, turning small talk into an interrogation. “So, Ava,” Sloan said, swirling the dark red liquid in her glass.
The diamond on her ring finger caught the light from the crystal chandelier, sending a sharp, aggressive prism across the tablecloth. “Dylan tells me you’re still doing that little project in the city. The community housing thing.”
I cut a piece of my steak, keeping my eyes on the plate.
“It’s a redevelopment initiative, Sloan. We focus on stabilizing low‑income neighborhoods before gentrification displaces the residents.”
Sloan laughed, a sound that was light and devoid of any actual humor. “Right.
Redevelopment. It sounds very noble. But does it actually pay?
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