They Erased Me. I Owned Their Empire Chapter 10

I stared at the ring.

My grandmother wore those emeralds for fifty-four years. She left them to me, not to my mother. She told me once,

when I was fourteen and crying in her kitchen on my birthday because no one had said it: Wren, honey. The people

who love you will never make you beg to be remembered.

I’d forgotten that.

“Get up, Grant.”

“Not until you say yes.”

“Then you’re going to be down there a very long time.”

The elevator dinged behind him.

Bianca.

Cream dress. Mascara running. She’d followed him. She saw him on his knees and made a sound I’d never heard from

her in sixteen years. Not the pretty crying. Something raw.

“You liar.”

Behind her, two more people stepped out of the elevator.

Mom and Dad.

They’d come down to find Bianca. To comfort her. To tell her it would all be okay.

“Grant,” Bianca screamed, “you told me she was nothing! You said she was boring! You said I was the one you always

wanted!”

“Bianca, not now-”

“You put your hand on the ultrasound!”

“The ultrasound you bought online,” Grant snapped.

Silence.

Mom grabbed Bianca’s arm. “Sweetheart. Calm down. Let’s go upstairs.”

Bianca tore free. Spun on me.

“You think you won?” Her voice cracked in half. “You think because of a stupid binder they’ll choose you now?” She

flung a hand toward our parents. “They never chose you. Not once. I made sure. Every Christmas Eve. Every single

year. I made them forget you.”

My mother’s hand dropped to her side.

“Bianca,” she whispered. “What are you saying?”

I took out my phone.

Theo had sent me everything that morning. Not just the transfers. Sixteen years of Bianca’s texts to him. He’d kept them, he said, the way you keep a splinter you’re scared to pull.

I held my phone out to my mother.

“Read it, Mom.”

She didn’t want to. I watched her not want to.

She read it anyway.

Bianca, age 15: Told Mom Wren pushed me off the dock again lol. She cried for an hour. I got the lake house room.

Bianca, age 17: Mom’s so easy. Cry once and she does whatever I want.

Bianca, age 19: Wren’s birthday cake came today. I told the bakery to put my name on it. Nobody even noticed. Nobody

ever notices her.

My mother made a small sound. Like something cracking inside a wall.

She looked at Bianca.

Then, for the first time in sixteen years, she looked at me. Really looked. Like she was searching for a face she’d once

known by heart.

“Wren,” she breathed.

Dad said nothing. His face had gone the color of the concrete.

Bianca laughed. High. Brittle. Awful.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. You loved it. All of you. You loved having a daughter you didn’t have to try with.” She swung toward Grant, who was finally getting up off the floor. “And you. Tell them. Tell them about the wedding.”

Grant went very still.

“Bianca. Shut up.”

“Tell them why you married her.”

I felt the floor tilt under my heels.

I looked at my husband.

“Grant.”

He didn’t answer.

“Grant. Why did you marry me?”

His jaw locked. His eyes darted to my father. To the elevator. To the exit sign.

Then he said it. Quietly. Like it didn’t matter. Like it was just a fact about weather.

“Because your dad wouldn’t hire me unless I was family.”

My mother gasped.

“Bianca was the plan,” he said. “From the start. You were just…” He shrugged, helpless, almost annoyed I’d made him

say it.

“You were the door, Wren. She was the room.”