The rain hammered against the windshield as Charlotte Thornfield watched her husband’s family toss the last of her belongings onto the muddy driveway. Her three-year-old twins, Emma and Ethan, pressed their faces against the backseat window of her battered Honda, their innocent eyes wide with confusion.

“Mommy, why are Grandma and Grandpa throwing our toys in the mud?” Emma’s voice cracked, and Charlotte felt her heart shatter into a thousand pieces.

Charlotte took a deep breath, forcing herself to stay calm for her children. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she said softly, though her voice trembled. “We’re going to be alright.”

Margaret Thornfield stood in the doorway of the sprawling colonial mansion, her perfectly manicured fingers gripping a steaming mug of coffee. The same hands that had once claimed to love Charlotte like a daughter now dismissed her with the casual cruelty of someone discarding trash.

“You have one hour to collect the rest and leave,” Margaret’s voice cut through the storm like ice. “This house belongs to the Thornfield family now.”

“You were never really one of us anyway,” added Richard, Margaret’s eldest son, stepping beside his mother, his designer suit immaculate despite the chaos around them.

Charlotte’s breath caught in her throat. It had been exactly three days since David’s funeral, and already his family was erasing her existence as if she’d never mattered. The woman who had held her hand during labor, who had called her grandchildren the light of her life, now looked at her with the cold indifference of a stranger.

“Margaret, please,” Charlotte’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “David would never want this. The children need stability.”

“They need?” Margaret’s tone was venomous. “David is dead.”

“And frankly, Charlotte, we all know you married him for his money anyway,” Richard sneered. “Well, surprise—there isn’t any left. The medical bills, the treatments, the experimental procedures—it’s all gone.”

Charlotte’s knees nearly buckled. “Gone?”

“How could it all be gone?” she stammered. “David said he’d set up college funds for the twins. He promised me.”

“Promises don’t pay bills,” Richard snapped. “Look around, Charlotte. This house is mortgaged to the hilt. Dad spent everything trying to buy more time. Noble, maybe, but financially disastrous.”

The twins started crying in the car, their small voices calling for their daddy, and Charlotte felt something inside her chest crack open. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be real.

“At least let me take some of David’s things,” she pleaded, her dignity hanging by a thread. “Something for the children to remember their father by.”

“You’ve taken enough from this family,” Margaret said, her voice final and absolute. “You have your car, you have your clothes, and you have those children. That’s more than you came with.”

As Charlotte stood in the pouring rain, watching her life get systematically destroyed, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. David had been secretive in those final months, yes, but not about money troubles. He’d been protective, almost as if he were hiding something precious, something he didn’t trust anyone else to know. The way he’d whispered her name in those final moments, the strange urgency in his voice when he’d tried to tell her about the box in Vincent’s office—she’d thought he was delirious from the medication.

But now, as she loaded her sobbing children into a car that might not make it through the month, Charlotte wondered if David Thornfield had taken more than just her heart to the grave. She wondered if he’d taken the key to everything.