She’d held my hair back the night my father died.
By the time it was over, they had the house.
They had the friends, most of whom quietly chose the version of events that required nothing uncomfortable of them.
They had the foundation I’d built from nothing, folded into a restructuring I was too destroyed to contest.
And on the last night, when I signed the settlement, Weston set the pen beside my hand and murmured, “At least leave with dignity.” Delphine waited outside the room with a container of soup, playing the concerned friend one final time, the performance so fluent I almost believed it even then.
By sunrise, they owned nearly everything I had spent twelve years creating.
And I let them, because I believed I deserved to lose it.
That was the thing they’d built even more carefully than the theft.
They’d built my belief that I had it coming.
Chapter 6 — The Year I Disappeared