“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 said he was an associate named Warren Ellis,” Gabriel replied.

Dad’s brows knit together in instant recognition.

“Warren Ellis,” Dad said slowly.

“That’s the same name in the corporate audit files.

Who’s Warren Ellis?”I said, glancing between the two of them.

“He claims to be an independent accountant,” Gabriel explained.

“He’s actually a financial record scrubber for rich people.”

Dad looked at the thin privacy curtain.