Introduction

Thanksgiving at my fiancé Ryan' s family home should have been a celebration. Instead, I watched him dote on his widowed sister, Nicole, ignoring me completely.

The final straw wasn't the pecan pie Ryan, my own fiancé, gave to her, claiming it was her favorite, even though it was my late mother' s recipe and "our thing."

It was the quiet conversation I overheard: Ryan telling his dad he was signing the deed to our shared home – the one I poured my entire inheritance into – over to Nicole next week.

When confronted, he showed no remorse, dismissing my feelings and arguing Nicole "needed" it. He and his mother then brazenly called me selfish for daring to react.

His family' s audacity reached its peak when Nicole, uninvited, ambushed me at my office, staging a dramatic scene where she publicly branded me a cruel monster attempting to evict a grieving widow and her child.

Then Ryan stormed in, pointing a finger, threatening my boss with financial ruin for supposedly enabling my cruelty, and daringly declaring I had "no heart."

He had no idea who he was talking to.

The smug look on his face vanished when my boss introduced me: not just Stella Anderson, but Stella Chadwick Anderson, heiress to one of the country's largest fortunes.

That's when I cut him off, professionally and financially. It was time for him to understand the true cost of underestimating me.