I parked beneath the flickering streetlight outside Dad’s apartment at nine that night, the folder of forms heavy on my knee. My hands would not stop shaking. I told myself I was only doing what a good daughter does, protecting what was left. I practiced his signature once more on the back of an envelope, climbed the stairs, and lifted my fist to knock.

The door opened before I touched it. Dad stood there in his torn leather vest, not smiling, and behind him a woman in a gray suit sat at the kitchen table with a laptop open to my own bank’s login page. “I have been expecting you, sweetheart,” he said quietly. “Come in and sit down, because you do not know what I did with the shop money.” My stomach dropped.