“Come get your worthless daughter and take her back,” my mother-in-law shouted my father as I lay broken at the bottom of the stairs after my husband shoved me down. “Your family will answer for it if she has even a scratch,” was the sole warning Dad offered her. They had no notion who my father really was, so they made fun of him.

He picked it up, walking toward the corner of the little room.

“Gabriel,” he said in a low voice.

We didn’t hear the caller’s voice, but Gabriel’s face immediately darkened as he listened.

“Copy those files straight onto my encrypted drive,” Gabriel said, his voice firm.

“Don’t send them across the regular office network.”

He hung up and slid the phone back into his coat.

Dad straightened up in his chair.

How did the contact report turn out?”