“Emily! What the hell is happening? My cards are declining at the country club. Fix the bank glitch now.”
“It’s not a glitch,” I said. “You’re cut off. I have the bank records, transfer logs, and deed. You have until tomorrow to get a lawyer because I’m sending everything to the authorities for wire fraud and elder abuse. Never call me again.”
I hung up and blocked him.
Then I brought my parents inside.
I knelt beside my mother and gently rubbed antibiotic ointment into her cracked hands. She flinched but kept staring at the floor, tears trembling on her face.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Mom?” I whispered. “Why did you let them do this?”
My father sat across from us, wrapped in a clean blanket from my duffel bag.
“Mark said you’d be angry,” he rasped. “He said we were a burden. He told us if we complained, you’d stop paying and we’d lose the house. We didn’t want to trouble you, Emily. We knew how hard you worked.”
My jaw tightened until it hurt.
The money was bad enough.
But Mark had used my sacrifice to break them.
