One of them, a young woman who looked like a college student, quietly picked up her purse, stood, and slipped out through the back exit off the kitchen without a word.

The other two rose a moment later and retreated up the stairs, and I heard the click of their bedroom doors locking behind them.

And then it was just the three of us: me at the head of the table, holding a forged deed to my own house in my shaking hands; my sister leaning in the doorway with a smug, mocking smile; and Julian, the loan shark, standing between me and the exit like a wall.

The witnesses I had gathered to expose my sister had fled.