The Five-Brother Vengeance

By 3:00 AM, the estate was quiet once more.

Chloe had been escorted out the front gates with three black trash bags containing her belongings, her high heels clicking frantically against the wet asphalt as she fled into the dark. Vance had already scrubbed our security logs, ensuring that no trace of my brothers' tactical vehicles or digital infiltration remained on any local system.

Upstairs, I pushed open Maya’s bedroom door.

The room was dark, illuminated only by the soft glow of a star-projector nightlight on the ceiling. Maya was sleeping peacefully now, her breathing slow and even. The pain medicine had done its job, and the angry redness on her back had begun to fade.

I sat down on the edge of her mattress, pulling the blanket up around her shoulders.

“Mommy?” Her little voice murmured sleepily without opening her eyes.

“I’m here, baby,” I whispered, brushing a curl from her cheek.

“Is the bad man gone?”

“He’s gone,” I answered, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “And he’s never coming back. Ever.”

Maya let out a tiny sigh of pure relief, burrowing deeper into her pillow, and fell back into a deep, untroubled sleep.

I stood up and walked down the hall to the master bedroom—the room Marcus and I had shared, the room where I had spent years shrinking myself to fit into his narrow expectations of a trophy wife.

Kane was leaning against the bedroom doorway, holding a cup of black coffee he had brewed downstairs.

“What are your plans now?” Kane asked, looking around the sprawling, lavishly decorated room. “You want us to liquidate the estate? Put the property in a trust for Maya?”

I walked over to the closet, pulled down one of Marcus’s expensive Italian wool suits, and tossed it into the open wastebasket.

“No,” I said, a dangerous, thrilling spark of independence igniting in my chest. “I don't want to sell it. I want to remodel it.”

Kane raised an eyebrow, a faint, approving smirk touching his lips. “Remodel it?”

“Marcus always said I was just a quiet bakery assistant who didn't know anything about business,” I said, turning to face my oldest brother. “Well, before I met him, I managed three successful bakeries in Chicago with our uncle. I let him make me forget who I was.”

I walked over to the vanity, picked up a pair of heavy scissors, and snipped off a handful of my own long, dyed-blonde hair—the shade Marcus had demanded I keep because he liked his women looking like delicate porcelain dolls.

“Starting tomorrow,” I said, letting the blonde locks fall to the floor, “we’re turning the bottom floor into a flagship artisan patisserie. And the upstairs is going to be Maya’s playroom.”