My brother’s voice cut through the Grand Metropolitan ballroom like a blade through satin. “Ladies and gentlemen—before the band jumps back into Sinatra—meet my family.” Gregory leaned into the mic, tux perfect, smile expensive, a tiny American-flag lapel pin flashing under the chandeliers like a warning light. Behind him, the hotel’s wall of windows reflected the city skyline and the terrace lights I’d designed—my work glowing while I stood there pretending it wasn’t mine.
He hooked an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into the spotlight as if I were an accessory he’d picked up for the night. “This is my stinky sister,” he announced. “No real job, no future—just a manual laborer.”
Two hundred heads turned at once.
Champagne flutes paused midair. Someone actually gasped. And I made myself a quiet, brutal promise: before this was over, they were going to read my name—out loud—like it mattered.
I stood there in my nicest dark jeans and a cream silk blouse I’d bought specifically to look like I belonged. The fabric was soft, the kind of soft that makes you think you can fake confidence if you wear it tight enough. Heat climbed up my throat anyway.
Laughter rippled through the crowd—polite at first, then hungry. Gregory raised his glass with a smirk. My mother’s lips tightened into that small satisfied line she wore whenever he “put me in my place.” My sister-in-law Vanessa’s eyes brightened the way sharks brighten at blood in the water.
Sinatra restarted, the band trying to paper over the moment. The party rolled on. But inside me, something clicked.
My name is Susie Fowl. I’m thirty-four. And according to my family, I’m the failure who “digs ditches for a living.”
Here’s what they didn’t know: I run Fowl & Co., a landscape architecture and construction firm with forty-seven employees across three states.
Last year, we cleared a little over $11 million in revenue. This year, we landed a $4.2 million city contract for the downtown riverfront restoration. Architectural Digest featured our work twice.
We won a national design award for the Morrison Park restoration. And sure, okay—I get dirty. I wear boots more than heels.
I’ve got calluses that would make my mother faint and hands that have moved stone heavy enough to crush the kind of men Gregory likes to impress. But “manual laborer” wasn’t an insult to me. It was just proof he didn’t know the first thing about the life I built.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
TAP → NEXT PAGE → 👇
