If they’re not, you do what you’d do to anyone.

No favors.

No vengeance.

Just the process.”

The mood in the room changed the instant I said it.

Because everyone at that table understood what I was really saying: that I was not asking my family to be a weapon.

I was asking them to be exactly what they claimed to be — a serious institution that did not bend its own rules, not even for blood, not even for a daughter with bruises.

My father looked at me for a long moment, and then he nodded, and I saw something in his eyes that I had not expected.