The tin roof was patched with corroded metal. Blue tarp covered a cracked section of the side wall. The wooden front door appeared barely connected to its hinges.
Damian remained inside his running SUV for twenty minutes, utterly frozen.
He couldn’t make what he was seeing fit with the woman he remembered. The Mabel he had known was fiercely independent, brilliant with numbers, and possessed of an exceptionally sharp mind. She had dreamed of obtaining an accounting degree and eventually operating her own firm.
What had happened to her?
The next morning, Damian quietly began asking questions around town. At the local general store, the woman behind the counter, Mrs. Gable, immediately recognized the name.
“Mabel Sterling?” Mrs. Gable sighed, shaking her head. “Terrible shame. That poor woman was completely ruined by the Vance family.”
The Vance family—headed by their merciless patriarch, Arthur Vance—controlled the county’s largest logistics and cattle operations. Mabel had served as their head accountant until four years earlier, when almost two hundred thousand dollars mysteriously disappeared from their corporate accounts.
Arthur Vance publicly accused her of grand larceny.
They never discovered a single dollar in Mabel’s possession. They never provided digital evidence showing that she had authorized the wire transfers. It didn’t matter.
The Vances possessed legal teams, political influence, and enormous financial resources. Mabel had a newborn baby and nothing else.
Her career disappeared overnight. Neighbors started treating her as though she were a thief, and no company within three counties would trust her with money. She ended up cleaning floors, sewing school uniforms, and accepting every exhausting odd job she could find just to keep Lily fed.
A dark, overwhelming fury ignited inside Damian’s chest.
Two days later, he drove directly to the cottage.
Mabel opened the door while wiping her hands against a damp rag. It took several seconds before she recognized the man standing on her porch in a perfectly tailored suit.
The rag slipped from her fingers and landed against the floorboards.
“…Damian?”
