After this embarrassment, you are no longer fit to represent the Vance name.” And she placed a thick folder on the table beside me.

There it was.

The real reason they had come.

Not to check on their daughter, hours after a difficult birth.

Not to meet their grandson.

They had come to take the last thing I still had that they needed.

My father moved forward, and delivered the terms with the cold efficiency of a man closing a deal.

“Sign today,” he said, “and we may provide you with a small monthly allowance.