For seven years I had always chosen his comfort over my own clarity.

But the forensic accountant Claire brought in found the thing that showed it had never really been about my mother at all.

Brandon would wire forty thousand to Lucas, and days later thirty-five thousand would move from Lucas into a separate account held in Brandon’s name alone.

Layer after layer of it.

He had funneled more than two hundred thousand dollars into accounts I couldn’t see — and he had started long before my mother sold that land, long before she refused him, long before he ever raised his hand.

He had not been protecting our money from my family.