My aunt forced me to scrub the floor while the family ate Christmas dinner… But she didn’t expect the billionaire she betrayed to walk in and flip the table.
The smell of roast turkey and sage stuffing usually makes a house feel like a home. But from down here, on the cold hardwood floor, all I could smell was lemon bleach and the dirty gray slush melting off my cousin’s boots.
“You missed a spot, Maya,” Aunt Linda said.
Her voice wasn’t loud. It never had to be. It was that sickly sweet tone she used when she wanted to twist the knife, the kind of voice that sounded like a lullaby but felt like a suffocating pillow.
I tightened my grip on the gray rag, my knuckles turning white, skin chapped and raw from the harsh chemicals. “I’m getting it, Aunt Linda.”
“Well, get it faster. The Guests will be here in twenty minutes for dessert, and I won’t have this place smelling like a kennel.” She took a long, languid sip of her Pinot Noir, her red sequined dress shimmering under the chandelier lights like the scales of a well-fed snake.
My knees were screaming. I had been cleaning since four in the morning—scrubbing the grout in the bathrooms, ironing the guest linens, de-icing the long driveway, and now, the dining room floor. While they sat at the mahogany table, passing the mashed potatoes and laughing, I was on my hands and knees, scrubbing away a spot of cranberry sauce my cousin Jessica had “accidentally” dropped. I had watched her do it. She had looked right at me, smirked, and let the spoon tip over.
“Mom, leave her alone,” Jessica giggled, tearing off a piece of a buttery roll. “She likes it. It’s the only way she earns her keep, right? Since she dropped out of college.”
My chest tightened, a hot lump forming in my throat. I didn’t drop out. Aunt Linda had drained my tuition fund—money my mother had left specifically for me—to pay for “essential home repairs.” Those repairs coincidentally looked a lot like a heated saltwater pool and a first-class trip to Cabo. But I couldn’t say that. I had nowhere else to go. Not since Mom died. Linda was my legal guardian, and she held the deed to the house my parents had built.
“Quiet, Jess,” Linda said, though her eyes danced with amusement. “Maya knows her place. She’s just… grateful we took her in. Aren’t you, sweetie?”
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper. I looked at the floor, staring at my distorted reflection in the polished wood. “Yes, Aunt Linda.”
“Good. Now, go fetch the coffee. And use the service entrance when you come back in. I don’t want you tracking dirt on the clean floor.”
I started to push myself up, my back spasming with a dull ache, when the heavy oak front door shuddered.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Three heavy knocks. They didn’t sound like a neighbor bringing fruitcake. They sounded like a gavel coming down on a judge’s bench.
The room went silent. The clinking of silverware stopped.
“Who on earth is that?” Linda hissed, checking her diamond watch. “The Parkers aren’t due for an hour. If that’s the carolers again, I’m calling the police.”
“I’ll get it,” I whispered, instinctively moving toward the foyer.
“Sit down!” Linda snapped, then realized I was standing. “I mean… stay out of sight. You look like a rag doll. Jessica, answer the door.”
Jessica rolled her eyes, wiped her mouth with a linen napkin, and sauntered to the foyer. I retreated into the shadows of the hallway, clutching my dirty rag to my chest like a shield.
The door creaked open. A gust of wind howled through the house, carrying snowflakes that danced in the warm foyer light.
And then, the air in the room seemed to vanish.
Standing there was a man I hadn’t seen in ten years. He was wearing a charcoal wool trench coat that probably cost more than this entire house. His hair was silver now, swept back, and his jaw was set like granite. He didn’t look like the fun uncle who used to sneak me candy and tell me ghost stories. He looked like a man who had walked through hell, bought the place, and evicted the devil.
Uncle Vance. The outcast. The billionaire tech mogul Linda claimed was “dead to us” because he refused to fund her lifestyle years ago.
Jessica froze, her hand still on the doorknob. “Um… can I help you?”
Vance didn’t even look at her. He stepped inside, his heavy boots echoing on the marble floor. He walked past Jessica as if she were a piece of furniture, ignored the garland and the twinkling lights, and walked straight into the dining room.
Aunt Linda stood up so fast her chair screeched against the floor. Her face went pale, her red lipstick suddenly looking like a garish wound. “Vance? What… what are you doing here? You weren’t invited.”
“I was in the neighborhood,” Vance said. His voice was a low rumble, vibrating through the floorboards and settling in my bones. “Checking on loose ends.”
He scanned the table. The half-eaten turkey. The expensive vintage wine. The silver platters.
Then, his eyes kept moving. Past the table. Into the shadows.
He saw me.
He saw the dirty rag in my hand. He saw my red, chapped hands, cracked from the cold and the chemicals. He saw the oversized, stained sweater I was wearing—hand-me-downs from the gardener—while everyone else was draped in silk and velvet.
He stopped. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
“Maya?” he asked. The hardness in his eyes cracked, just for a second, replaced by something that looked like horror.
“Hi, Uncle Vance,” I managed to choke out. My voice was small, broken.
He looked from me, down to the wet patch on the floor where I had been kneeling, and then back to Aunt Linda. His face hardened again, but this time, it wasn’t cold. It was burning. It was the look of a volcano right before the eruption.
“She’s… helping out,” Linda stammered, her voice pitching high with panic. She smoothed her dress nervously. “She’s staying with us. We’re taking care of her.”
“Taking care of her?” Vance repeated. He took a slow, deliberate step toward the table. “You’re eating a feast while my brother’s daughter scrubs the floor at your feet?”
“It’s not like that!” Linda cried, backing up until she hit the sideboard. “She has to earn her way! She has no money, Vance! She’s a burden! We feed her, we house her—”
“A burden,” he whispered.
He closed his eyes for a second, taking a deep breath. When he opened them, there was no mercy left. Only a cold, calculating rage.
“You stole her inheritance, Linda. My forensic accountants found the transfers this morning. You didn’t ‘take her in.’ You took her hostage to access the trust fund.”
The room gasped. Jessica looked at her mother, eyes wide.
“You’re right, Linda,” Vance said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “The burden ends tonight.”
Vance walked up to the head of the table. He gripped the edge of the solid oak with both hands. His knuckles popped.
“Vance, wait—” Linda shrieked, raising her hands.
With a roar that shook the walls, Uncle Vance heaved upward.
CRASH.
The entire dining table—turkey, crystal, candles, gravy boats, and all—flipped into the air.
It was chaotic and beautiful. Plates shattered against the wall in a starburst of porcelain. Gravy splattered across Linda’s sequin dress. The cousins screamed and scrambled backward as the feast turned into a pile of wreckage on the floor. A bottle of red wine smashed near Jessica’s feet, staining the rug blood-red.
Vance didn’t flinch as a glass shattered near his boot. He stood amidst the destruction, breathing hard, looking like a titan of vengeance. He pointed a finger at Linda, who was now sobbing, covered in mashed potatoes and shame.
“You have twenty-four hours to vacate this property,” Vance growled. “I bought the bank that holds your mortgage this morning. I’m foreclosing.”
He turned to me, his expression softening instantly. He extended a hand—clean, warm, and safe.
“Get your things, Maya,” he said softly. “We’re leaving. And you’re never scrubbing a floor again.”
I dropped the rag. It made a wet thwack on the floor. I didn’t look back at Aunt Linda or Jessica as I took my uncle’s hand. For the first time in years, the house didn’t smell like bleach. It smelled like freedom.
