“With what?” I asked. “You spent the last fifty thousand dollars of the trust on Chloe’s eighteen-carat gold birthday necklace last month.”

Chloe reached up, her fingers wrapping around the thin gold chain at her throat as if it burned her.

She looked at Mother, her expression hardening into something cold.

“Is that true?” Chloe asked.

Mother didn’t answer; she only cried harder, her head bowed.

“You took her surgeries for my necklace?” Chloe’s voice cracked.

She yanked the chain off her neck, the delicate metal snapping with a sharp click.

She threw it onto the stone floor between our parents.

“I don’t want it,” Chloe said, her voice shaking. “I don’t want any of it.”

Father looked at the necklace lying on the stone, his jaw tight.

“You are being dramatic, Chloe,” Father said, his voice dangerously calm. “We have provided you with a life of luxury. Both of you.”

“A life of luxury in a cage,” I said. “While you kept me in the guest house so the neighbors wouldn’t ask questions about the girl with the burned face.”