Lucas wasn’t the successful financier my family believed him to be. He’d been fired from his brokerage two years earlier for unauthorized trading and hidden it from everyone. His Mercedes was leased and three payments behind. Since then, he’d allegedly used fake vendor invoices to move company money into accounts he controlled while draining Bianca’s personal savings to cover his losses. Regulators were already investigating. Whoever legally accepted responsibility for the company’s financial liabilities could end up answering for the missing millions.

That was why Clause Thirty-Eight mattered. Lucas had drafted the contract himself and convinced everyone it would protect Bianca’s career. In reality, my signature would make the family’s supposedly “broke sister” the official name attached to the financial mess. Bianca began crying, insisting she hadn’t understood the clause. Looking at her expression, I believed she’d trusted Lucas without reading carefully. Dad slowly lowered his phone. Mom stared silently at the ugly coat she’d made me wear. Then I made one call that ended Lucas’s plan completely.