“Dis bonjour à la rivière,” murmured my stepdaughter as she struck me, pushing me overboard. My son simply watched and smiled. They thought my 2.7 billion dollars belonged to them. But that night… I stayed seated in my chair.
“Dis bonjour à la rivière, Helen,” whispered Sabrina, her breath cold against my ear. Before I could turn around, her hands gripped my back firmly. I twisted, my hips screamed in pain, and the next thing I remember — the world tilted. The icy water engulfed me, drowning my body.
My son Michael stood on the deck just a few steps away. His face was blank. No shock, no horror — just a small, discreet smile that told me everything. It wasn’t an accident. The current swept me away, pulling me farther from the gleaming white boat that had, just hours earlier, seemed to be a promise of reconciliation. Struggling to keep my head above the water, a thought pierced me like a knife: my child wanted me dead.
Let me tell you how an ordinary Tuesday morning turned into a betrayal so sharp it almost took my life.
I am Helen Marshall, sixty-six years old, a widow, and the mother of one son. Two years ago, my husband Thomas passed away, leaving behind a growing logistics business we had built from scratch. When he died, the empire became mine. I became the sole owner of a fortune worth nearly 2.7 billion dollars. Since then, my life has oscillated between grief, recovery, and the desperate hope that my son still sees me as a mother, not just a bank.
So when Michael called that morning, in person, not through the secretary, my heart soared. His voice was warm, almost youthful. “Mom, let’s celebrate your recovery after the surgery. Just you, me, and Sabrina. A family outing. The boat is waiting.”
I should have noticed the warning signs in those words. I should have felt the lack of sincerity. But loneliness makes fools of us. After weeks of physiotherapy for my hip prosthesis, I wanted nothing more than to believe my son still cared for me.
I put on the navy blue dress that Thomas had loved and took a taxi to the Trenton harbor. The boat gleamed in the sun — forty feet of white, shining hull. Michael greeted me with a hug that was cautious, while Sabrina watched from the deck, wearing a smile as sharp as broken glass. The river glittered, calm and inviting. But beneath the surface, danger waited, watching for the moment when I would let my guard down. And when that moment came, it was my family who pushed me.
The river showed no mercy. The cold stole the air from my lungs, and the wet dress dragged me down. For a moment, panic overwhelmed me. Was this the end?
But I was never one to go quietly. Planting my heels, I resurfaced and managed to breathe just in time to see the boat moving farther away. Sabrina was already on the phone. Michael hadn’t even looked back. The betrayal hurt more than the cold.
Then — the rescue. A fishing trawler appeared around the bend. A man in his sixties, strong and tanned, leaned over the railing. “Hang on, ma’am!” he shouted. “Tyleri, throw the rope!”