“Nor is it normal to need forensic evidence to survive living with your stepfather.” The courtroom went silent.

And then the evidence did the work my father had trained me, without knowing it, to trust.

A court-appointed digital expert testified that all eighty-seven files retained their original timestamps, their location data, their unedited waveforms — that every automated upload matched our home network, that nothing had been altered.

Dr.

Sato testified about our injuries, and about the distinct, overlapping stages of healing beneath our skin that told a story no single fall could tell: that these were not accidents, but a pattern, inflicted deliberately, over months.

The defense tried to suggest that Nora and I had done it to each other.