1 My son had a ceramic piggy bank he had been meticulously filling for almost two years. Ever since he laid eyes on a five-thousand-dollar, limited-edition remote-controlled race car, he refused to spend a single penny of his allowance. To scrounge up extra cash, Darren would even scour the neighborhood after school, collecting discarded aluminum cans to return for the deposit. To support his dedication, I would slip a crisp fifty-dollar bill into the slot every time he brought home straight A's. As the ceramic bank grew heavier, Darren's anticipation reached a fever pitch. Finally, on his tenth birthday, the bank was full. Darren threw his arms around my waist, practically vibrating with excitement. "Mom, come on, let's smash it open together!" But when he happily cracked the ceramic shell with a hammer, the joyful atmosphere instantly evaporated. Instead of five thousand dollars in folded bills, there was nothing but a pathetic pile of nickels and dimes. I immediately reached for my phone to call the police, but my chronically cheap husband stepped right in front of me, grabbing my wrist. "Don't be embarrassing. You're going to call the cops over something this stupid?" "It's a good thing the money is gone anyway! It'll teach him not to be so greedy and materialistic!" One second, I was completely baffled by his bizarre reaction. The next second, my eyes landed on his childhood friend, Sienna, who was standing by the kitchen island. Wrapped around her wrist was a thick, blindingly new solid gold Cartier bangle. The shattered pieces of the piggy bank were scattered across the hardwood floor. Darren stood frozen in the corner, silent tears streaming down his face. Hearing his own father call him greedy terrified him so much he didn't even dare to cry out loud. It absolutely shattered my heart. That was his money. He saved it dollar by dollar. He skipped buying ice cream with his friends, dug through recycling bins for two years, and hoarded every cent. I stared at Sienna. She had gotten completely cleaned out in her recent divorce, walking away with zero assets. She was currently living rent-free in a downtown condo I bought before I even met my husband, constantly coming over to our house for free meals. There was no universe where she could afford a solid gold bracelet. "I'm calling the police," I said, my voice turning to ice. "I don't want filthy thieves thinking they can walk into my home." "Five grand is not pocket change, Marcus. Darren bled for that money. I don't care how much it costs to hire a private investigator, I am getting my son's money back!" Marcus's face instantly darkened into a stormy scowl. "Watch your mouth! Who do you think you're talking to?" "Fine, you want the truth? I took the five grand. Are you happy now?" "Sienna just found out she's pregnant. I had to get something nice to welcome the baby!" "Instead of blowing that cash on a stupid toy car, Darren can consider it a welcome gift for his new sibling. It builds character. It'll keep him from growing up into a spoiled brat. I think it's perfectly fine." Listening to Marcus justify stealing from his own child made the blood roar in my ears. "You robbed your son's piggy bank to buy your hometown friend a gold bracelet?" "Do you have any idea how hard he worked for that money? Do you know how many trash cans he dug through to save five thousand dollars?" "Even if you desperately needed to play sugar daddy for your little friend, how dare you steal from your own flesh and blood!" Marcus was a low-level clerk at a logistics firm. He barely cleared four grand a month, yet he had an absolute obsession with playing the big-shot billionaire. When Sienna had nowhere to go after her divorce, Marcus generously waved his hand, evicted my paying tenant without my permission, and moved Sienna into my pre-marital condo. He even paid her monthly utility bills out of his own shallow pockets. When Darren needed fifty bucks for a school field trip, Marcus suddenly had empty pockets. On our wedding anniversary, I was lucky to get a grocery store greeting card. But a luxury gold bangle for another woman? He swiped his card without blinking. If he wanted to play the high roller, fine. But he had absolutely no right to fund his fragile ego with my son's money! "God, Rachel, why are you being such a tightwad?" Sienna leaned against the counter, inspecting her manicured nails. "Marcus told me you lacked class, but I didn't want to believe it. Besides, this bracelet isn't for me. It's for the baby growing inside me." "Think of it as Darren buying his future brother or sister a welcome gift. They'll look out for each other when they grow up. Buying a human sibling for five grand is a way better investment than some cheap plastic race car!" Marcus had looked slightly guilty under my furious glare, but the second Sienna chimed in, his chest puffed out with misplaced pride. "Exactly! I'm doing this for Darren's own good! You've completely spoiled him!" He marched over to the corner, grabbed Darren by the shoulders, and shook him. "Darren, aren't you being a little too vain?! Wanting a five-thousand-dollar toy! We are a normal, working-class family! Stop acting like you're some trust fund baby!" Sienna stared Darren down, her heavy black eyeliner making her gaze look venomous. "Darren, you wouldn't be that selfish, right? This bracelet is for your future sibling. If you act like a selfish little brat, nobody is ever going to love you." Terrified, my son frantically shook his head, shrinking into himself and staring at the floor. I violently shoved Marcus away and pulled Darren behind me, pointing a shaking finger at my husband. "I don't care what sick twisted fantasy you have going on with her, but you do not touch my son's money! I want that exact race car sitting on this dining table by tomorrow evening." "If it isn't, I am filing for divorce, and both you and Sienna are getting thrown out of my condo!" Marcus's face turned purple with rage. He hated that I had humiliated him in front of his precious childhood sweetheart. I grabbed Darren's hand and dragged him into his bedroom, slamming the door. A perfectly good birthday party, entirely ruined. The next morning, after dropping Darren off at school, I texted Marcus a final warning. If I didn't see that race car by dinner, we were meeting at the courthouse. By mid-afternoon, I hadn't received a single text back. Instead, I saw a viral post dominating my social media feed. 2 #DemonChild #HormoneShotSideEffects #SpoiledBratKarma I clicked on the anonymous post. "My hometown guy promised to buy me a solid gold Cartier bangle after my divorce. But his paranoid, lunatic wife threw an absolute fit. She'd rather blow thousands on a remote-controlled car for her brat than let me have the bracelet. She orchestrated a massive screaming match at her kid's birthday party just to humiliate me." "I heard that kid was a miracle baby saved by heavy hormone injections. He has zero manners, he's incredibly stingy, and he cries if you even look at him wrong. He's honestly acting like a psychopath." "I woke up with severe stomach cramps at midnight last night. I know that vicious little monster cursed me and my baby. I told my guy I might as well miscarry. The mom pumped herself full of so many stabilization drugs during pregnancy, the kid was born a literal demon." At the bottom of the screen, the algorithm recommended the author based on my phone contacts. It was Sienna. My entire body started to shake with a blinding, white-hot fury. Anyone in the world could criticize my son, but she was the absolute last person who had the right! When I was eight months pregnant, I woke up with agonizing abdominal pain. I shook Marcus awake, begging him to drive me to the emergency room. Halfway to the hospital, Sienna called him in hysterics. She claimed her husband was beating her and begged Marcus to come save her. "Marcus, please hurry! Rachel just has a little stomach ache, but if you don't come right now, he's going to kill me! I'm going to die!" At five in the morning, on a freezing, pitch-black road, Marcus pulled over, forced me out of the car, and told me to call an Uber. By the time the ambulance finally reached me, Darren's fetal heartbeat had stopped. I fell to my knees in the hospital hallway, sobbing, begging, pressing my forehead against the cold linoleum floor as I pleaded with the doctors to save him. I endured nearly two hundred agonizing progesterone injections and an emergency premature C-section just to bring Darren into the world alive. Marcus didn't show up until the day after Darren was born. He walked into the maternity ward with a perfectly unharmed Sienna trailing behind him. "Jeez, Rachel, you could have at least texted me that you were going into labor," Marcus had complained. "Oh my god, why did you take all those hormone shots without asking Marcus first?" Sienna had chimed in. Marcus stared down at Darren in the neonatal incubator, his voice dripping with disgust. "Why did you pump yourself full of those drugs? Sienna said taking too many stabilization shots causes severe brain damage. If he's defective, we should have just scrapped him and made a new one." I had lost my mind that day, screaming like a banshee until security dragged them out of my hospital room. If it hadn't been for Sienna, my Darren would never have been born premature. Thinking about that memory, I quickly swallowed my prescribed blood pressure medication to keep myself from blacking out. I was just about to call Marcus when a video file popped up in our chat. I tapped play. Darren was sitting across from Marcus, his eyes wide with absolute terror. "Darren, I heard you were mad about Auntie Sienna's bracelet. Did you curse her and her baby to die?!" Tears welled up in Darren's eyes, but he squeezed them shut, terrified to let them fall. "I didn't! I didn't!" "Stop lying! Auntie Sienna heard you whispering yesterday!" "She had to go to the hospital last night because of your evil little curse! What's next? Are you going to curse me to die too?!" Marcus's heavy hands clamped down on Darren's fragile shoulders, digging in hard. Darren sobbed, frantically shaking his head. "Dad, I swear I didn't." "So you're not mad about the bracelet? Do you still want that race car?!" "No, I don't! I don't want it! Please, Dad, I don't want it!" Before the video even finished playing, a text from Marcus chimed through. "Sienna's stomach was killing her last night. Look at the vicious little monster you raised." "Consider the toy car his punishment. Besides, he said it out of his own mouth that he doesn't want it anymore, so you can't blame me." He ended the text with a peace-sign emoji. Staring at the pure, unfiltered terror on my son's face in the video, my grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles turned white. I was entirely done with this marriage. I immediately contacted a few divorce attorneys. My parents had paid the massive down payment on our primary residence, and I had paid every single mortgage installment. Before I handed him the divorce papers, I was going to liquidate and secure every single asset we owned. I was going to make absolutely sure Marcus walked away with nothing but the lint in his pockets! After finalizing my legal strategy, I drove home. The moment I pushed the front door open, I saw a mountain of fast-food trash piled high on the dining table. Sienna and Marcus were lounging on the sofa, watching a movie. Darren was acting like their personal servant, bringing them water and snacks, not even daring to sit down. He just stood frozen in the corner. "Oh, Rachel, you're finally home. Hurry up and cook dinner!" Sienna commanded. "Ever since I got pregnant, I've been craving sour food. It's probably a boy. Make me a sour tomato soup, and make sure you peel the tomatoes first!" Marcus casually spat a sunflower seed shell onto the rug. "You take forever to get home from work. We've been starving for hours. Don't think just because you're some manager at a corporate office that you aren't still my wife when you walk through that door!" "Hurry up and cook for Sienna. It's her first pregnancy, she needs to be incredibly careful. She can't do any heavy lifting!" I let out a dark, cynical laugh, remembering my own pregnancy. When I was six months pregnant, I was drowning in mortgage stress. I worked overtime every single day, and when I got home, I scrubbed the floors and cooked the meals entirely by myself. "When I was pregnant, I don't remember you being this incredibly considerate." Marcus rolled his eyes, visibly annoyed. He grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds and threw them at my chest. "Did I force you to do the chores? You chose to do them yourself! It just proves you were born with a maid's mentality. You literally can't sit still!" "I ask you to make one simple meal and you give me a lecture. You are so annoying." So my eight years of grueling sacrifice and endless support were nothing but a "maid's mentality" to him. There was absolutely zero reason to show this man any mercy. "Sienna," I said, my voice eerily calm. "You have until tomorrow morning to pack your bags and get out of my condo. I already signed a lease with a new tenant, and they are moving in tomorrow afternoon."
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