chapter 8
The servants were dismissed one by one.
Suitcases piled up in the hallway.
My parents and brother moved through the house in a frantic gray haze, gathering whatever scraps of dignity they could still fit into luggage.
I sat on the couch flipping through a magazine.
Ethan dragged his suitcase across the marble floor and glared at me. “Why are you still sitting there? Waiting for creditors to throw you out?”
I did not look up. “Why would I leave? This is my home.”
He laughed sharply. “Still acting tough at a time like this? Let’s see where you put your face when the people coming to take the house drag you out.”
My mother lost patience. “Enough. Stop embarrassing us and go.”
I stayed right where I was.
My father stormed over, grabbed my arm, and yanked me to my feet. “Madeline, what exactly are you trying to do? Since the day you came back, this house has known no peace. Do you want us all to lose face together?”
That was when a butler in a dark suit walked in through the front door with a line of household staff behind him.
The three of them froze.
My father muttered, “Forget her. Let her stay and make a fool of herself alone.”
He started toward the door.
But the butler passed right by them and stopped in front of me.
Then he bowed.
“Miss Meng. Everything is ready.”
At the door, my father turned around so fast his face almost twisted off.
“What did you call her?”
The butler looked at him with polite irritation. “Mr. Meng, if I’m not mistaken, this property no longer has anything to do with you. Please leave. We are here to serve Miss Meng.”
The silence that followed was almost musical.
My brother laughed first, but there was panic under it. “You’ve got the wrong person. She’s just my cheap little sister. Not whoever you think she is.”
My father added viciously, “If she’s in your way, throw her out. She’s always been shameless.”
The butler ignored them and bowed to me again.
“Miss Meng, your instructions?”
I stood up slowly and let my gaze sweep over their stunned faces.
“Oh,” I said. “I forgot to mention it. The person who bought all of the Meng family’s debt—and this house along with it—was me.”
I smiled.
“I’m the owner now. And your biggest creditor.”
For a second, none of them moved.
Then I lifted one hand and said to the butler, “Throw them out. Their luggage too.”
When I first got control of that fifty percent stake, I had not wasted the opportunity.
I had built connections.
Expanded my network.
Started my own company quietly on the side.
By the time the Meng family’s crisis hit full force, I was ready.
I bought the debt.
Then the subsidiaries.
Then the house.
By the time they understood what had happened, I already owned the ground under their feet.
As the guards pushed them toward the gate, my brother shouted over his shoulder, “How is this possible? You transferred the shares back! What money could you possibly have had?”
I looked down at him from the front steps.
“The kind you’ll never touch.”
My father shouted, “We should never have brought you back. We should’ve let you die in that other house.”
That got him a cold look from me.
The guards slammed them to the ground when they kept resisting.
Only then did they finally shut up.
I stepped closer and looked down at the three of them.
“If you know what’s good for you, disappear quietly. Otherwise, don’t blame me for being cruel.”
I gave one small signal.
The guards hauled them up and threw them outside the gate like garbage.
The mansion doors closed.
And for the first time in both my lives, the house behind me belonged entirely to me.