The Unwanted Heiress: A Billion-Dollar Reckoning

s supposed to be my first step to

as ranch into a river of mud. The testing center wa

or an Uber," I said, my voic

who preached about pulling yourself up by your own

ou think money grows

SATs. I can'

fast, the sound of it echoing in the cavernous l

age, I walked five miles to school in the snow,

d the seventeen dollars I had painstakingly saved over six months.

ome back until you' ve lear

girl, stood by the fireplace, his arms crossed. He watched the whole thing happe

hew had bought her. She wouldn' t have cared anyway. My return ten years after my

ket in seconds, cold and miserable. As I trudged toward the main road, my boots sinki

or oil price tickers. Tod

ding on a stage at the city' s art museum. The headline scrolled across the bot

through the rain, explained t

ughter, Molly Smith, to celebrate her recent

ering my hair to my face,

y adopted sister, the girl who had repla

me out for asking for a fifty-dollar rid

until the image of their smiling faces burned itself into my mind.

eavy glass doors were locked. A sign taped to the ins

this piece of paper had been my everything. It was my ticket out, my escape

he ticket into tiny pieces and

ng inside me broke. Or

I' d had to beg for, and dialed the only num

Full

oice was warm and concerned. "Gabr

ear. "Dr. Fuller, about that early admission scholarship to

to let you go. But I thought your f

tion of the ranch, at the

," I said. "I'