Right. All my cards were just extensions of Uncle Harvey's accounts. Now that everything belonged to Russ Finch, of course he'd cut me off immediately.
I had no choice but to retreat to Grandma Margaret Abbott's old apartment—the run-down place she'd left to my mother.
I counted the cash in my wallet. A few crumpled bills. Forget next semester's tuition—I couldn't even guarantee my next meal.
I sat in the spotless house, a familiar ache spreading through my chest.
My uncle and my mother had been twins. When I was two, a car accident stole both my parents in a single night.
The siblings had always been close. My uncle could never bring himself to sell this place. He came often to clean it himself, saying he could still see traces of my mother here—in the kitchen where she'd cooked, in the garden she'd tended.
He'd never married. He raised me instead, becoming both father and mother, giving me everything he had.
So why—why—would he leave his fortune to a stranger?
I couldn't accept it. I watched the will video over and over, convinced something was wrong.
My hand froze on the mouse. My pupils contracted.
There.
George Acevedo wasn't in the video.