The room went quiet.

“I thought I was helping my new family,” Rafaela said.

“It turns out you all thought you’d found a walking credit card with a bank account attached.”

Emiliano stood frozen.

But she still held the one document that would turn this from a family humiliation into a criminal matter, and when she opened it, even Leticia stopped breathing.

She let the moment sit before she opened it, because she wanted them to feel, all of them, the full weight of what they had done — not the rain, which was cruelty they could rationalize, but the money, which was a pattern they could not.