Chapter 2 - The Anatomy of a Parasite
To understand why Joanna’s smug expression vanished in a single heartbeat, one had to look back three years—to a time when Joanna Pennington was nothing more than a social climber drowning in debt, and Amelia was a rising corporate strategist who believed family loyalty meant bailing out a drowning relative.
Joanna was Amelia’s estranged step-aunt, a woman who had spent her entire adult life treating other people’s bank accounts as her personal retirement fund. When Amelia’s father passed away, leaving behind a substantial inheritance and a complex real estate portfolio, Joanna had swooped in like a vulture draped in designer silk, weeping crocodile tears about “family unity” while quietly manipulating the estate execution.
Amelia, caught up in grief and wanting to believe the best of her remaining blood relatives, had absorbed Joanna’s mounting financial disasters. She paid off Joanna’s luxury car lease, covered her upscale suburban townhouse mortgage, settled her credit card balances, and even funded her boutique wellness club memberships.
It had become an unwritten, ironclad contract: Joanna played the refined, upper-crust matriarch of the family, and Amelia quietly wired the funds every single month to keep the illusion alive.
Joanna had never imagined a world where Amelia would cut the cord. She viewed Amelia as predictable, dutiful, and perpetually guilty about her success. Why wouldn't Amelia keep paying? After all, Amelia was the successful one; sharing the wealth was just part of the tax of being connected to a “superior” branch of the family.
Or so Joanna had believed, right up until the moment Amelia pressed Confirm Transfer Halt on her phone screen.
Within three seconds, a sharp chime echoed from Joanna’s designer handbag. Joanna pulled out her phone, her eyes dropping to the notification. Her face, previously painted with arrogant amusement, drained of all color. The screen displayed an automated bank alert: Scheduled auto-pay to mortgage lender declined. Account status: Restricted.
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“What… what did you just do?” Joanna stammered, her voice losing its polished facade as panic cracked through her composure.
“I canceled your rent, your car insurance, your club dues, and your allowance,” Amelia replied, her gaze unblinking. “You want to act like a tyrant over a six-year-old child? You can do it on your own dime.”
