Kiran went pale.

Reem stopped smiling.

And my mother looked at me — waiting, expectant, certain I would fall into line the way I always had.

Chapter 18 — Seven Days

I lifted my payroll card — which Amina had quietly taken back from my mother’s bag — and I heard my own voice come out steadier than it had ever been.

“You have seven days,” I said, “to return all two hundred and eighty thousand dollars, and to clear the credit-card debt you opened in my name.