I went because I needed to see whether two years of disgrace had left them any humanity at all.

I barely recognized my father when I walked in, his hair gone stark white, his eyes sunken and hollow.

“Daniela,” he rasped.

“Thank you for coming.

We made… mistakes.” Mistakes. The word landed like a slap.

My mother wept about everything they had lost, the house, the savings, the dignity, and still, in all of it, there was no apology, only self-pity over consequences.

Then my father slid a paper across the table: a formal request for a hardship stipend from the liquidating trust assets, the very assets that had been reassigned to me and the relatives they had robbed.