My Husband Forced Me Out When His Father Struck Me at His 1864 Banquet — He Didn't Know I Secretly Owned Their Iron Dynasty
General Silas Endicott stood on the podium in the great hall, the same hall where I had been struck, his voice ringing with practiced sorrow. He spoke of my “unstable disappearance,” his brow furrowed for the sixty grand guests still reeling from the previous night’s drama.
He announced that, out of concern for my well-being, he had instructed the city’s banks to freeze all my personal accounts. It was a preemptive strike, designed to cut off my every resource, to force me to return humbled and destitute.
But I was already miles away, rattling along the uneven turnpike to Baltimore in a borrowed, plain carriage, cloaked in a heavy, nondescript shawl. The news had reached Clara Albright’s boarding house only hours after his announcement, whispered by a delivery boy.
My heart hammered against my ribs, but a grim satisfaction settled in. Silas had underestimated me, just as he always did.
The carriage pulled up before a sturdy, iron-gated bank in Baltimore’s bustling financial district. I stepped out, a small, forgettable figure amidst the well-dressed merchants and clerks hurrying past. No one gave me a second glance.
Inside, the vault manager, a polite, older gentleman with spectacles perched on his nose, recognized the unique code I provided. My late mother had ensured this contingency.
“Mrs. Endicott,” he said, his voice hushed, “we have held this for you, as instructed by your mother’s legacy.”
He led me through a heavy steel door, past rows of gleaming safe deposit boxes, to a small, private room. He presented a heavy, brass-bound box.
I unlocked it with the small key from my reticule. Inside, nestled beneath layers of silk, were bundles of crisp federal war bonds, each denomination clearly marked. Twelve thousand dollars.
A fortune, enough to launch a full-scale legal assault against the Endicott Ironworks, enough to hire the best legal minds, to pay for investigators, to sustain myself. It was my mother’s final, defiant act against the forces that had sought to break her family.
My fingers traced the elegant engravings on the bonds, a silent promise to myself. Silas Endicott thought he had stripped me bare. He did not know that my mother, long dead, had left me a weapon.
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