PART 2: I lied to my dad and told him I had failed the entrance exam, even though my score was 98.7
The phone pressed so hard against my ear that the plastic casing groaned. Mr. Sanders’ words didn’t just chill me; they paralyzed me right there in the velvet-draped foyer of the Beverly Hills banquet hall.
Through the double glass doors behind me, the clinking of champagne flutes and the smooth, jazzy rhythm of a live quartet drifted out. My father’s booming laugh resonated above the din. He was right there. I could see the back of his tailored charcoal suit through the glass, his arm draped proudly around Carol’s waist.
“Mr. Sanders,” I whispered, my voice a jagged edge in the plush corridor. “What do you mean he’s at a notary office? He’s here. I am looking at him right now. He’s hosting Lily’s party.”
“Not Arthur, Diane,” Sanders hissed, his breath rattling through the speaker. “The lawyer. His personal attorney, Marcus Vance. Vance just walked into the Wilshire Notary Plaza with a young woman. She has your legal birth certificate, your social security card, and a temporary state ID with your name on it—but the face on the ID is not yours. They are filing an emergency petition to sign over the Pasadena deed under a power of attorney clause, claiming you are mentally unfit and incapacitated due to an emotional breakdown from failing your exams.”
A cold, visceral wave of nausea hit me.
The documents.
I opened my manila envelope with trembling fingers, pulling out my folders. My birth certificate was there. My ID was there. But then it clicked. A month ago, Carol had volunteered to ‘organize’ our family safety deposit box. She hadn’t just looked at the will; she had ordered official, certified duplicates of every single piece of my identity.
And the girl. Who was the girl?
I looked through the glass doors. Lily was standing on the low stage, holding a glass of sparkling cider, her cheeks flushed with the adoration of fifty high-society guests. But she wasn’t looking at her dad. She was staring at her phone, her thumb flying across the screen in a frantic, rhythmic blur.
“Lily,” I breathed.
“Diane, listen to me,” Sanders urged, his voice dropping an octave. “Vance has a crooked notary on his payroll. If that girl signs the emergency relinquishment under your name, the title transfers to a shell company owned by Arthur Reynolds within the hour. By the time we contest it in probate court, they will have already finalized the cash sale to the Canadian development firm they’ve been scouting. The house will be demolished before a judge even looks at our paperwork. You need to get to Wilshire Boulevard now.”
“No,” I said, a terrifyingly calm clarity washing over me. The trembling stopped. “If I run to Wilshire, Arthur stays here, completely insulated. He’ll claim Vance acted without his knowledge, or that they were defrauded by an impostor. He wins either way. We cut the head off the snake right here.”
“Diane, that’s too risky—”
“Aunt Susan is in the parking lot,” I interrupted. “She’s waiting in her car. Mr. Sanders, I need you to call the police. Report an ongoing identity theft and document forgery at the Wilshire Notary Plaza. Give them the girl’s description if you can see her.”
“I can see her through the glass,” Sanders said, his voice tightening. “She’s wearing a heavy blonde wig and oversized sunglasses, but beneath it… Diane, she looks remarkably like Lily’s cousin. Vanessa.”
A cruel, twisted family affair. They really thought they had thought of everything. They thought I was a broken eighteen-year-old girl crying herself to sleep in some dingy motel room, too ashamed of her “failure” to face the world.
“Call the police, Mr. Sanders. Have them raid the notary. And make sure they detain Vanessa. I’ll handle the puppet master.”
I hung up before he could argue.
I pulled the black blazer tighter around my shoulders, adjusting the strap of the heavy leather bag that contained my arsenal: the voice recorder, the 98.7th percentile official transcript, the certified copy of my mother’s true will, and the sealed letter.
I didn’t sneak into the ballroom. I walked in.
The heavy oak doors swung open, and the sudden influx of bright chandelier light hit my eyes. Nobody noticed me at first. I was a shadow in a room full of sequins and silk. I walked along the perimeter, blending into the background of ice sculptures and towering floral arrangements of white roses—my mother’s favorite flower, desecrated for Lily’s celebration.
“And now,” Arthur’s voice boomed through the microphone, echoing off the gilded ceiling. “A toast to the future! To my beautiful daughter, Lily, who proves that with the right guidance, the Reynolds bloodline always achieves excellence. To Canada, and to the bright, unwritten chapters of her life!”
“To Lily!” the crowd roared.
I stepped out from behind a massive fern, right into the center aisle of the ballroom.
“Funny,” I said, my voice cutting through the fading applause. I didn’t need a microphone. The sheer, freezing venom in my tone made the immediate tables go dead silent. “I didn’t know the Reynolds bloodline considered a 52nd percentile score ‘excellence,’ Dad.”
The silence spread like ink in clear water. Heads turned. Whispers died in throats.
Arthur’s face underwent a horrific, magnificent transformation. The jovial, proud-father smile curdled into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. Next to him, Carol gasped, her hand flying to her pearl necklace so hard the string strained.
“Diane?” Carol stammered, her eyes darting around the room as if looking for an exit. “What… what are you doing here? You weren’t invited.”
“Clearly,” I said, taking a slow, deliberate step forward. The click of my black heels sounded like a countdown. “It’s hard to invite the daughter you legally declared dead to the world half an hour ago, isn’t it?”
Arthur stepped down from the stage, his large frame towering over the guests as he marched down the aisle toward me. He tried to maintain his public persona, his voice a low, threatening rumble meant only for my ears.
“Get out of here, you useless brat,” he hissed, his eyes wild with a mixture of anger and sudden, creeping panic. “You failed. You embarrassed this family. I told you to never come back. Security!”
Two burly men in suits at the back of the hall began to move toward me.
See more on the next page
