Chapter 1

My daughter-in-law, Chloe, was an extreme eco-freak and an obsessive penny-pincher.

All because I flushed the toilet after peeing in the middle of the night, she kicked my bedroom door open, pointed right in my face, and shrieked:

"Are you insane?! If it's yellow, let it mellow! You don't know how to save it and flush in the morning?! Water costs money! Every cent of your pathetic little pension is getting flushed straight down the drain!"

Terrified, I clutched my chest. "It's the middle of summer... Leaving it there stinks up the whole place. Besides, one flush barely uses any water..."

She planted her hands on her hips and sneered. "You're doing this on purpose just to mess with us! When my mom stays over, she saves every drop of vegetable-washing water just to flush!

"And what about you? You live here rent-free, eat our food, and waste our money every single day!"

Her own mother had only stayed for a single week to cook a few meals, and Chloe had sneakily bought her a luxury massage chair. Yet with me, she picked a fight over breathing the wrong way.

My son, Brandon, stumbled out of the bedroom, rubbing his eyes, and snapped at me impatiently, "Mom, just listen to Chloe, okay? It's not a big deal."

Without another word, I turned around and walked back into my tiny, windowless box of a room—less than eighty square feet.

I pulled out my phone and sent a message to a lawyer overseas:

"Mr. Miller, I'm ready to access the estate my brother left me."

The reply came almost instantly: "Understood."

Attached was a screenshot of a verified bank account.

I counted the long string of zeros over and over again.

Twenty million dollars.

This money came from my younger brother, Jay.

Our parents died when we were kids, leaving just the two of us to survive. My brother was brilliant from day one, so I dropped out of high school at sixteen and worked multiple jobs to put him through school. When he got into a prestigious university in Germany, I literally sold my blood twice just to scrape together the airfare.

Jay made every sacrifice worth it. After graduating in Munich, he got into cutting-edge AI algorithms that I could barely comprehend. When his tech firm went public, he became a major shareholder.

During one of our video calls, he smiled and said, "Sis, pack your bags and move to Munich. My place is huge."

I told him I couldn't leave because my grandson needed me. He paused, thought it over, and promised, "Alright, Sis. Then I'll save up a massive nest egg so you never have to worry about retirement."

I laughed, thinking it was just sweet talk.

Last winter, after working three days straight in the lab, he suffered a sudden, fatal heart attack.

A German attorney arrived at my doorstep with a notarized will Jay had drafted long before:

[All assets under my name are to be inherited solely by my sister, Helen Clark.]

That was the exact moment I learned my baby brother was gone forever.

I never told a soul about the inheritance, not even Brandon. I simply couldn't accept the reality that Jay was gone.

I never imagined that so soon, I would truly have to rely on this money to survive my golden years.

I had spent my entire life pinching pennies, even cutting my blood pressure pills in half to make them last. And now, over a single toilet flush, I was being branded an ungrateful parasite.

Lying in that narrow bed, a sharp, aching pain gripped my chest.

I still remembered five years ago when Chloe got pregnant. Brandon called me, sounding desperate and overwhelmed.

Without hesitation, I sold the suburban home I had lived in for thirty years. I didn't keep a single cent of the ninety thousand dollars; every penny went straight into paying down their mortgage.

I thought to myself: *Young couples have it tough. We're family. I should help as much as I can.*

And so, I moved into their tiny, cramped storage closet, beginning five years of relentless, thankless servitude.

When Chloe was pregnant, I cooked every meal from scratch and rubbed her swollen feet. She complained that my hands were too rough and smashed my bowls on the floor three separate times.

After my grandson was born, I was awake every night at 3:00 AM sharp to warm bottles and change diapers. I jumped at every whimper. In five whole years, I hadn't slept through the night once.

Whenever the baby ran a scorching fever in the dead of night, Brandon and Chloe locked their master bedroom door, shouting through the wood, "We have work tomorrow! You deal with it!"

I was the one who carried the baby through the freezing dark to the emergency room.

Beyond that, groceries, formula, diapers, and even Leo's preschool tuition were paid out of my pocket.

Over five years, that amounted to at least twenty thousand dollars.

Did they ever say thank you? Never. They took it all for granted.

They pocketed the cash from my sold home without blinking. They went blind to the endless chores I did every waking minute.

Instead, in their eyes, I had become an annoying freeloader who "lived off them for nothing."

I pulled out the copy of the notarized inheritance document, running my fingers over the crisp paper in the dark.

Piece by piece, memory by memory, my heart turned completely cold.