One at a time, I scanned all thirty-six slips until the spreadsheet total at the bottom of the screen showed exactly one hundred eight thousand dollars.

My work email chimed with an automatic alert from the Chicago power company.

The final disconnection notice for the suburban address had gone through, and the high-speed fiber internet line tied to my credit card was set to be shut off remotely at exactly eight o’clock that night.

In seven hours, Brent’s screen would go black in the middle of his evening games, leaving him with a dead router and no way to get it back online without paying the six-hundred-dollar back balance in his own name.

I made a new encrypted cloud folder called Chicago Financial Records, dragged all thirty-six receipt scans into it, and locked it with a twenty-digit password.