Ten minutes later, holding our son against my chest, I walked back out of that office building a completely different woman. My name is Kemet “KT” Jones. I’m thirty‑two years old.
And this is how, in one day, I went from housewife to multimillionaire, from devoted wife to betrayed ex, and from victim to the woman who burned my ex‑husband’s world to the ground.I won fifty million dollars in the Mega Millions lottery. That morning, the sun was shining softly over Atlanta, Georgia, the kind of golden light that makes the red brick houses and maple trees glow. After feeding my three‑year‑old son, Jabari, his usual bowl of Cheerios and sliced banana, I started tidying our small rented house in southwest Atlanta.
Jabari sat on the living room rug with his Duplo blocks, building crooked towers and knocking them over with delighted squeals. While cleaning the kitchen, I spotted a cheap white paper ticket stuck to my grocery notepad on the fridge door. The Mega Millions ticket I had bought the day before.
I almost laughed. I never played the lottery. I had bought that ticket on a gray, rainy Monday, ducking into a little neighborhood liquor store just off Cascade Road to escape a sudden downpour.
The place smelled like old beer and mopped floors. Behind the counter, an elderly Black woman with kind, tired eyes was selling lottery tickets. “Baby, buy one for me,” she said with a small, hopeful smile.
“Might bring you some luck.”
I didn’t believe in games of chance. I believed in coupons and clearance racks and praying the rent check didn’t bounce. But something in her voice made me feel bad for saying no.
So I pulled a few crumpled bills from my wallet and bought a quick‑pick ticket, letting the machine choose some numbers and adding a few tied to my family—my birthday, Zolani’s birthday, Jabari’s, and our wedding anniversary. Now that ticket was just hanging there on the fridge, like a joke. Probably trash, I thought, pulling it loose from the notepad.
Still, my curiosity got the best of me. I wiped my hands on a dish towel, grabbed my phone, and opened the official Georgia Lottery website. The numbers from the previous night’s drawing popped up on the screen.
My heart stuttered. I looked at the ticket in my hand. For a moment, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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