And their fake unity came apart in a single instant.

“Kiran was the one who talked Mom into the credit card in the first place,” Reem burst out, “because Neil never checked his statements —” “You’re the one who wanted the designer bags and the paid trips,” Kiran shouted back.

They stood in my hospital room and tore at each other, seven years of shared theft turning, the moment it stopped paying, into mutual accusation.

I watched my brother and sister devour each other, and I felt something I had not expected: not vindication, but a strange, cold clarity about what my family had always been.

Because their loyalty to one another, which I had envied my whole life — the way Kiran and Reem and my mother formed a tight, warm circle I was forever half outside of — turned out to be nothing but a partnership of appetite.

It held together for exactly as long as there was money flowing, and the instant the money stopped and the danger arrived, it dissolved into each of them trying to feed the others to the law to save themselves.