Then I handed him a second folder, the one I’d been saving.

Damon had spent months pressuring my father to invest a hundred and fifty thousand dollars into a “private expansion opportunity” — Redpoint, the same shell company he was floating with debt against my house.

Everett read the emails, and for the first time his composure slipped into something colder.

“He tried to pull your parents into it,” he said.

“He tried to take their money too.”

“Yes.”