Carrying my newborn in my arms, I didn’t expect my grandpa to ask me this: “I gave you a car, right?”

I was pushing a secondhand bicycle down the sidewalk with one hand, because the tire had gone flat the moment I left the driveway. The rubber had sighed and collapsed like it couldn’t take another day in this family either.

My fingers were numb, my cheeks stung, and my body still didn’t feel like my own after childbirth. I’d been sleeping in ninety-minute bursts for weeks, and the little sleep I got was the thin kind that didn’t heal anything.

That’s when the black sedan pulled up beside me.

At first, I didn’t recognize it. I just saw the clean lines, the tinted windows, the way it moved like it had a right to the road.

Then the rear window slid down.

“Ava,” a voice said—deep, controlled, sharp enough to slice through the air.

My stomach dropped.

My grandfather’s face appeared in the window like a storm front rolling in. Silver hair. Steel eyes. The kind of expression that had made grown men sweat in boardrooms.

“Why won’t you ride the Mercedes-Benz I gave you?” he demanded.

It wasn’t a question the way most people ask questions. It was a command disguised as curiosity.

I stopped walking.

Continue reading…