She had texted him one word from the bed the moment her parents walked in — a single word they’d agreed on weeks earlier, for exactly this contingency, because Adele had known her family well enough to know they would come, and roughly when, and why.

She had not known the precise shape the ambush would take.

But she had known there would be one, the way you know a storm is coming from the particular stillness before it, and she had prepared for it with the same quiet thoroughness her grandmother had taught her.

The attorneys had been on standby.

The audit report had been in hand.

The hospital’s own administration had been quietly briefed that a vulnerable patient might face pressure from family members with a financial interest in her signature.