"Mom—"
"That's what Nicholas did to Olive! He found her when she was vulnerable, showered her with money, and by the time she realized what was happening, she couldn't escape!"
"Phoenix isn't Nicholas?—"
"You owe him four hundred thousand dollars! You think that doesn't come with strings?"
"He said it was a gift?—"
"There's no such thing as a free gift from a Crawford. Trust me. I watched it destroy the best friend I ever had."
Her voice breaks. She's not just angry. She's terrified.
CHAPTER 14- JADE
The argument doesn't end that night.
It continues the next morning over coffee. It picks up again at lunch, circling back to the same points, the same fears, the same accusations. By dinner, we're both exhausted, but neither of us will let it go.
"You don't understand what that family is," Mom says for the hundredth time. "You don't know what they're capable of."
"Then tell me." I set down my fork, pushing away the food I can't eat. "Really tell me. Not just warnings and lectures. Tell me what happened with you and Olive. All of it."
Mom is quiet for a long moment. She stares at her plate, and I watch something shift in her expression. The anger fades, replaced by something sadder.
"Olive and I were roommates in Boston," she says finally. "We met at Wellesley, but we didn't get close until senior year. She was a math major, working at an educational company writing test questions. I was in the lab, running tissue samples. We were both just trying to figure out our lives."
I stay silent, afraid that if I speak, she'll stop.
"One day, she got a check in the mail. Anonymous. No return address. Sound familiar?” Mom's voice takes on a distantquality, like she's looking at something far away. "The exact amount of her student loan debt, down to the penny. Almost one hundred seventy thousand dollars."
The parallel hits me like a physical blow. Phoenix did the same thing to me. The exact same thing.
"She deposited it," Mom continues. "We didn't know who sent it or why. A few weeks later, my friend Amelia invited us to Hawaii. She was housesitting at this incredible estate on Maui, and she wanted company." Mom pauses, her jaw tightening. "The estate belonged to Nicholas Crawford. The man who'd sent the check."
"So you were there," I say slowly. "When Olive met Nicholas. You were with her."
"I was there for all of it." Mom's laugh is bitter. "I met James the same night Olive met Nicholas. We both got swept up in it. The money, the lifestyle, the attention from these powerful men who seemed to want nothing more than to make us happy."
This isn't the story I expected. I thought Mom had been on the outside, watching her friend make terrible choices. But she was right there in the middle of it.
"What happened?"
"At first, everything was perfect. James was charming, attentive. Nicholas seemed genuinely in love with Olive. We spent months going back and forth between Boston and Hawaii, living in this fantasy world." Mom's hands clench around her coffee mug. "Then I got pregnant."
I freeze. She never talks about this. Never.
"I was terrified," she continues. "James and I had only been together for a few months. I didn't know if he was ready for that kind of commitment. But Olive was so excited. She was there when I found out, holding my hand, telling me everything would be okay."
"What happened with James?"
Mom's face hardens. "I caught him cheating. Before I could even tell him about the pregnancy, I found out he'd been with someone else. And when I almost lost you, when I was in the hospital fighting to keep you alive, do you know where he was?"
I shake my head, my throat too tight to speak.
"A strip club." The words come out flat, dead. "Nicholas told him what happened to me, and instead of coming to the hospital, he went to a strip club. That's when I knew. He didn't deserve to know about you. He didn't deserve to be your father."
"And Olive disagreed?"
