“Your father was right, and you know it.” Uncle Buckley plopped his feet back on the ground and leaned forward, his elbow bumping against his hat, which pushed against the stack of aid requests and sent them tumbling over. He looked at the resulting messy pile in the middle of her desk as if he had no idea how it had happened. “You’ve played your little game of Boss Lady long enough. You either have a husband by Christmas as required by your father’s will, or I become the foundation’s executive director and shut the place down.” He narrowed his beady little eyes at her. “You could’ve spent the past year looking for a man who might have let you play executive director on a very part-time basis. Instead, you just stuck your head in the sand and pretended that you could change the way things are.”

The urge to rage at this man (the de facto leader of their family and the one who lorded over them all like a real-life Lord Farquaad) rushed up her body like a hot wave of pent-up fury as she sat in the guest chair in her own damn office.

“This isn’t the Middle Ages,” she said, needing to stay calm because other people’s ability to buy groceries, to learn new skills, and to pay daycare bills depended on the foundation continuing its work. “You can’t force me to get married or fire me. That’s not legal.”

“First of all, this is an at-will state. The foundation’s board can fire you for any reason or none at all. Secondly, force you to get married?” Buckley’s voice went up as if he was shocked—shocked—she’d level such an accusation against him. “Michelle Christine Finch, we are only guiding you toward your true calling—being a wife and submitting to your husband. Maybe if your dad had listened to me and put his foot down immediately with you, we wouldn’t be in this situation, but here we are.”

“This is blackmail.” She sank back against the chair, her spine curling into a C as her shoulders drooped under the weight of lost hope. “People depend on this foundation. It helps thousands of people every month.”

“Yes,” Uncle Buckley said, having the audacity to look all torn up about the situation—or as close as he could with a heart as small as a pebble on the beach. “It would be a shame if they suffered because of your pride and selfishness.”

And there it was, the battle she’d been fighting since she’d come out of the womb without a penis into a family that claimed to believe in traditional values, when it was really all about control. How foolish she’d been to think she’d escaped their clutches and could live as the outcast of one of Harbor City’s richest and most powerful families.