I went to the beautiful Victorian mansion where the unaware Glantry family was still living, and I was accompanied by law enforcement and State Officers, full of warrants, documents and papers, and had them gathered in the patio, where I gave them the news. Their lawyers were all under arrest, the dirt they hid was out in the open, and their house wasn’t theirs anymore. They owned nothing and had to leave immediately. Since also the cars were all in the name of the company – to avoid paying taxes – they couldn’t take them either.

The mother was crying and pleading. The father was trying to find a way to convince me, and the son was pretending to be sad about what happened to me and that he wanted to make up for it, but I had disappeared soon after I left the hospital. I listened with a heart of ice to his lame excuses, and couldn’t resist in asking him if when I caught him having intercourse with the maid, he had just slipped in her by mistake. And if they both laughed at me because they thought I was joking when I fainted and the blood started flooding out of my nether parts. If when nobody visited me at the hospital it was because they were crying for me, and if when they sent a lawyer telling me the marriage never happened and I had to leave the area because they would make sure I would never find a job there, it was to protect me. If being angry at me and happy for the death of our unborn daughter was a way to show how much he wanted to help me and.

Then I told them, their mother included, that they were just harvesting what they sowed. On a side note, I added, they threw me out for being poor. Had they been less greedy they would have discovered soon that I was the heiress of the Cornwall empire, and they would have been rich beyond imagination. But they treated people basing on the money they believed they had, not for what they really are, and that put them in the situation they were now. They laid their own bed, now it was time to sleep in it. Their grandfather had been an old-fashioned guy and was sick of them as much as most of the county. I added that I wouldn’t prevent them to work like instead, they did to me. I would be happy to see them learn a job and start, at last, to earn a living honestly.

They left the property with nothing more than a case each, the mother crying, the men grumbling with desperation and fear in their eyes. I was filled with satisfaction, for being able to eradicate such filth and to be honest, I was almost surprised by the easiness I could stop any feeling of pity while evicting them. I felt a great feeling of peace, knowing that at last, things were going as they should.

I called the staff and saw the one who had been screwing Michael when I caught them. I understood, while in the hospital, why she was always treating me as if I was a lowlife. She never stopped having intercourse with him in all those years. I called her out of the line. She was trembling.

“Since you liked so much to have sex with him, and treat me like a lowlife because I was being cheated with you, you can follow him. I’m curious to see how much gratitude you’ll get now for being his sex toy and accomplice.”

She started crying and pleading. My heart was made of stone. Most of the house staff was watching her with contempt, but when one of them tried to plead for her, I told her I lost my baby because of her who, while screwing my supposed husband, laughed in my face while my baby was dying and I was brought to the hospital. That maid paled and shut down.

Now all of them were looking at the first one with contempt. Apparently, she also treated most of them as if she was superior, as she felt that having intercourse with the heir was giving her some superiority. The family wasn’t loved by the rest of the staff, treated by them just above slaves.

More or less the rest of the staff had been kind with me when I’ve been there, even if out of pity because they were well aware that I was embarking in a hell-like life.

I told them they could keep managing the house, and that now and then I would call and send guests there, visit myself or send someone to check how things were going.

Two days later I was back in the bookstore. At last. I kept working there, and when Mary died, five years later, even knowing I didn’t need it, she left me the store. In her will, she said that she knew I loved it and was positive then that I would keep it as it was.

Robert was living with me in the small room above the store. We enlarged it and made a two-bedroom flat with two wide bathrooms, and a little bigger space for the daily living. Because our coming daughter would need space.

I met his family at last. His mother was a friendly woman, and we were soon friends. She never complained about my living arrangements, even after she discovered how rich I was, and I was going to be. She instead sometimes dropped by for a few days to have some pause from the pampered life she was conducting and enjoyed helping me working in the bookstore and serving customers in the adjoining café, then cooking our meals together.

Robert’s father wasn’t that eager to pass time without being pampered, but he was nonetheless a good man, always friendly, and to some extent, made up for my need of a father.

I still speak with Jean at the phone every now and then, she is happy and her brother is climbing the Cordell’s ranks quick. She has a consistent income every month, but I know she rarely touches it, preferring to earn her things by herself. Miles would be forever grateful to me, as much as I am to him, and never regretted his choice to help me.

About the Glantrys… The mother found a job as a cleaning lady in the house of an old lady who had good memories of the grandfather. Mrs. Glantry’s family had been rich, but when she inherited, she put everything she had in her husband’s care, and he lost everything.

Her husband, Michael the Second, left them and it's said he is a homeless drunkard somewhere in the city slums.

The son, Michael the Third, is working as a waiter, nobody will hire him for a better job, thanks to his record of craps. Known for being unreliable and dishonest, that was the best he could find, and wasn’t given the chance to misbehave. On a side note, I paid the place to hire him and keep him under surveillance.

The maid found a job serving as a waitress in a small café, after being on the verge of becoming a prostitute. Initially, she tried to be with Michael and the family, but was treated worse than a beggar when they thought they could still have rich friends helping them.

Instead, their supposed friends, being either like them or treated by them with stuck-up superiority, turned their backs on the Glantrys as quick as they knew they were in disgrace. If they managed to maintain any relationship after the reading of the will, knowing they were going to cheat me out of it.

When it became known they had been beaten, and were spared prison only to have them beg around in humiliation, caused the wealthy to avoid them as if plagued and highly contagious. At least, those who didn’t happen to be involved with the AFLA dirty doings. These anyway considered them the culprit of all their problems, since if they had been less careless, all the AFLA issue wouldn’t have blown in their face damaging everyone.

As said, I’m pregnant, and soon will have a daughter, the first of many children, I hope, from my husband Robert, who prepared and signed a prenuptial to protect me, just in case. I know I’ll have a family to help me raise her properly. I never dreamt that such happiness could exist in the world, much less that I would live it. Now I’m seldom crying, and when I do, the tears are always of joy, as I seem to be living for real in the world of dreams.

In two years, I’ll be the richest woman in the country, and I’m studying and preparing to manage things, with the help of Robert, Mr. Carey and Mr. Randall and some other experts, and I’m getting some experience by managing the various Glantry’s business. Which now are joined in the Dash Enterprises, in honour of the two people who selflessly helped me survive after that blow. I’ll be setting places in the whole country – as a start – to help women who have been used or abused like I was, and give them chances to rebuild at least a comfortable life.

I didn’t tell her, but I also set a fund for Jean, and she’ll be given several millions the day of her wedding. There is a clause that would prevent her husband to get a dime if he divorced her, cheated her or mistreated her, and that nobody other than her could touch. Along with every child, she will have a fund for their studies created. I did the same for Miles, but he is married to his job at the Cordell’s, that he adores. That family will never need for anything anymore.

As that famous movie said, it can’t rain forever.