Madison hadn’t come home for refuge. She’d come to use her father as a human shield against loan sharks. She’d weaponized his love, his guilt, and his very identity.

This is the girl who called me controlling because I asked her to use a coaster, I thought, staring at her. She’s a parasite.

Robert was hyperventilating. The man who’d spent five years making excuses for his daughter’s “bad luck” was drowning in the reality of her malice. “You committed fraud,” he whispered.

“You stole my identity.”

“I was going to pay it back!” Madison cried, tears finally spilling — real ones this time, born of desperation, not manipulation. “I just needed time!

If you let us stay, we can consolidate the debt, we can—”