He set the mug down. “Your father is a parasite. A parasite does not stop feeding because you swat at it once.”

The cold started at the back of my skull and went down.

The checks that were so easy to forge. The offshore loan, so clumsy. The certificates just sloppy enough that a federal agent caught them in one night.

“You let them,” I whispered. The blood was leaving my face. “You let them dig it.”

“I didn’t let them, Avery.” His mouth went to a thin, satisfied line. “I guided them. I left the bank authentication tokens where Grant would find them.

I forgot my words in front of precisely the people who would carry it back to Dr. Thorne, so that he could feel confident selling a diagnosis he never made.