His Cruel Allowance Game Cost Him His Wife and Heir novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Pick One
Three days after giving birth, Alma is made to pick an envelope at her mother-in-law's table, opens all ten on camera, and walks out with her daughter and forty dollars. Rodrigo texts that he will take the baby to court.
My husband's whole family watched me pick an envelope on the night I came home from the hospital.
My daughter was three days old and asleep against my chest.
I had been stitched shut that morning and told not to lift anything heavier than her.
My milk hadn't come in, and the nurse had sent us home with two sample cans of formula.
By afternoon both cans were empty.
I took my card to the pharmacy on the corner, and the cashier told me it was declined.
I tried it twice more.
Then I called my husband.
"The bank is just being slow, mi amor," my husband said. "Don't worry about it. At dinner tonight I'll take care of everything."
So I went to his mother's Sunday dinner with a baby on my chest and a bag of empty cans.
His mother, Soledad, sat at the head of the long table with her pearls on.
She looked at the bag of empty cans and took it from me herself. "Sit, Alma. I'll set this by the door where you can reach it."
She put a cushion on my chair and asked how the stitches felt.
Then she turned back to her wine, and nobody else asked.
After the meat course, my husband, Rodrigo, stood and tapped his glass.
His cousin raised her phone to film, the way she did every month for the family group chat.
Rodrigo set a stack of black envelopes on the tablecloth in front of me.
Each one was sealed with a blob of red wax.
Next to them he put the gray bank pouch they came in on the first of every month, stamped Gulf Coast Fiduciary.
He never let me see inside that pouch.
He carried it to his study himself.
"Month thirty-one," he said, and the table clapped. "Ten envelopes. One of them pays. Pick one."
I had played this game thirty times.
I had won twice.
"Rodrigo," I said, "I don't need the game tonight. I need forty dollars for formula. Please just give me the card."
His aunt laughed into her wine.
Soledad folded her napkin. "A wife who asks for a handout hasn't learned to wait for the envelope."
"Rules are rules, mi vida," Rodrigo said, and smiled at the phone. "Pick one."
Camila stirred against me and made a thin, hungry sound.
I reached out and took the first envelope from the left.
I broke the wax with my thumbnail.
Inside was a white card in my husband's handwriting.
Next month. Try again.
"Aww," his cousin said, and kept filming.
"Thirty-one months," Soledad said, "and she still can't pick."
Rodrigo shrugged. "Sorry. Maybe next month."
I looked at the nine envelopes left on the cloth.
Then I tore open the second.
Next month. Try again.
I tore open the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth, and the seventh.
The table stopped laughing.
"Alma," Rodrigo said. "Stop it."
I opened the eighth and the ninth.
Both said the same thing.
The tenth envelope was heavy.
Inside it were two twenty-dollar bills, and a card that said: Good girl.
I held it up so the phone could see it.
Three wins in thirty-one months, and this was the biggest one.
"This was never a game," I said. "You just picked which night I would be hungry."
"Sit down," Rodrigo said, quietly now.
"I won," I said. "I'm keeping it."
I put the bills in my pocket and swept all ten opened envelopes into my diaper bag.
Then I picked up the empty cans from the hall myself.
Soledad didn't stand. "Let her go, Rodrigo. She has forty dollars and a newborn. She'll be back by Friday."
I turned to his cousin's phone and said, "Post it."
So I stepped out.
My friend from the dental office where I used to work picked me up at the curb, and I cried only after the car door shut.
At the pharmacy I bought the formula with the forty dollars.
I fed Camila in the parking lot with the dome light on.
Rodrigo's text came while she was drinking.
You walked out of my mother's house with my daughter. Her birth certificate has my address on it, not yours. Come back tonight or tomorrow a judge hears who took a newborn from her home.
Under it, a second text came in from his mother, who had never once written to me.
Forty dollars won't feed her past next week, dear. Count it.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend