I never told my family that I own a $1 billion empire. They still see me as a failure, so they invited me to Christmas Eve dinner to humiliate me and celebrate my younger sister becoming a CEO earning $500,000 a year. I wanted to see how they would treat someone they believed was poor, so I pretended to be a broken, naïve girl. But the moment I walked through the door…

The road ahead wouldn’t be simple. Awkward dinners, trust rebuilt in careful increments. Uncle Harold would eventually ask for a loan—I’d have to say no. Jessica would try to leverage my name—I’d have to stop her.

But as I walked them out of the headquarters, past the hidden bookcase, back into the dusty, cinnamon-scented air of The Turning Page, the dynamic had shifted forever.

They walked out into the snow—not as the royalty they imagined, but as people granted a second chance, humbled and human.

I locked the door behind them, flipped the sign to CLOSED, and returned to the counter. My eyes fell on the sandpaper-scratched purse. I picked it up, turned it over in my hands, and tossed it into the trash.

It was time for a new one. A fresh start. A life fully my own.