Up until that moment, I had assumed his family disliked me simply because I didn’t cater to their every whim.
The next morning, I discovered they had been blaming me for five years for a financial disaster that had happened before I even met my husband. And I had no idea how far they were willing to go to force me out of my own home.
PART 2
The meeting felt like a courtroom trial.
More than fifteen relatives were packed into Uncle Robert’s living room. Teresa’s eyes were rimmed with red, as if she had spent the entire night weeping for an audience. Patricia deliberately avoided eye contact with me.
Uncle Robert didn’t waste any time. “Alex, are you really willing to turn your back on your entire bloodline over your wife’s pride?”
“I’m not turning my back on anyone,” Alex replied, stepping into the center of the room. “I am stopping you from turning my wife into an unpaid maid.”
Teresa dabbed at a dry eye with a tissue. “Ever since he married her, he’s a completely different person.”
Then, an aunt blurted out a name I had only heard mentioned in passing a couple of times over the years. “If Alex had just married Valerie Vance, none of this disrespect would be happening!”
Alex squeezed my hand tightly.
Finally, the truth came out.
Years before Alex and I met, his family had practically arranged a marriage between him and Valerie Vance, the daughter of the majority owner of Vance Commercial Logistics—one of the largest regional logistics providers in the Midwest.
The union was meant to come with a multi-million-dollar supply contract that would have secured his father’s firm for decades.
Alex had broken off the engagement after discovering that Valerie was struggling with severe substance abuse and that both families were actively planning to cover it up just to close the business merger.
“I wasn’t going to sell my life for a corporate contract,” Alex said, his voice echoing in the quiet room.
Arthur glared at him. “Sometimes an eldest son has to make sacrifices for the good of the family enterprise.”
Everything suddenly made sense.
To them, I wasn’t just Mariana. I was the living reminder of the multi-million-dollar deal that got away.
Patricia lost her temper. “Because of you walking away from the Vances, I lost my trust fund for graduate school! Valerie’s family was going to pay for it!”
Then they shifted their focus to our home.
Teresa asserted that our house was “Vance family property” because the land had originally belonged to Alex’s grandfather.
Alex corrected her immediately.
While the parcel of land had been gifted prior to our marriage, the actual house had been constructed using a joint mortgage in both of our names, along with $50,000 that my parents had gifted us after selling a small rental property they owned.
“Mariana and I built that home together,” Alex said firmly. “No one is throwing her out.”