I did not reply to the chat again. Instead, when my shift ended at seven that morning, I drove straight to the lake house, not to clean it, but to take it back. The first thing I noticed was proof of everything I had suspected. A spare key hidden under the flowerpot that I had never placed there. Beer bottles in my recycling from a weekend I had been working. A guest bed still unmade. My private sanctuary had been someone else’s party house for months, and no one had ever intended to tell me. So I made three calls of my own. A locksmith. A security company. And my lawyer.

By Thursday afternoon, every lock on the property had been replaced with a smart system I controlled from my phone. Cameras now watched every door. A monitored alarm was armed. And a licensed process server was standing by, because my lawyer had drafted formal no-trespass notices addressed to my parents by name. I changed the Wi-Fi password they had somehow stolen, disabled the old garage code, and posted a small, legal notice near the driveway. Then I went home, slept for the first time in days, and waited. Friday morning, right on schedule, my phone rang. It was my father, and he was screaming.