Celeste froze on the exterior threshold of her Sycamore Street apartment,

By six o'clock that evening, the tension inside Mom’s suburban kitchen was thick enough to cut with a knife. I hadn’t planned on coming over, but Avery Frost had advised me that securing the physical original of the forged mortgage document from Mom’s safe was critical before Celeste could attempt to destroy or alter it.

I unlocked the front door using the spare key Mom had given me years ago. As I stepped into the hallway, I found Mom sitting rigidly at the kitchen island, her hands folded tightly in her lap. Celeste was pacing back and forth across the hardwood floor, her hair unbrushed, her mascara smudged beneath her eyes from hours of crying.

Ezra was safely upstairs at a friend’s house, shielded from the toxic fallout of his aunts' and grandmother's choices.

“How could you do this?” Celeste shrieked the moment she saw me, spinning around and pointing a trembling finger at my chest. “You’re destroying our family over a stupid car! Over some old metal box!”

I walked past her, setting my briefcase on the kitchen counter, and opened it with deliberate, unhurried movements. I pulled out a certified copy of the bank audit trail.

“It’s not just a car, Celeste,” I said, my voice cutting cleanly through her hysteria. “And it’s certainly not just a box. You committed felony forgery. You took out a $45,000 second mortgage against Mom’s house without her knowledge, routing the funds through a dummy account to pay off your luxury debts and your high-end travel agencies.”

Mom flinched violently, her head snapping toward Celeste. “Celeste? Is that... is that true? What is she saying?”

Celeste stopped pacing, her face flushing a deep, angry crimson. She threw her hands up in the air. “I was going to pay it back! It was just a temporary bridge loan until my investment portfolio matured! Mom, you don't understand, if I didn't pay the booking agency, my entire social circle would have—"

“Your social circle?” Mom whispered, her voice trembling as the horrifying reality finally pierced through years of willful denial. “You mortgaged my house? The home your father and I worked forty years to pay off? You risked everything I own for a vacation?”

“Mom, don’t look at me like that!” Celeste sobbed, rushing toward the island and grabbing at Mom’s shoulders. “Yara is just exaggerating! She’s always been jealous of me because she’s trapped in that boring little life with that quiet, weird kid of hers—"

Before Celeste could finish the sentence, I stepped forward and grabbed her wrist, my grip firm and unbreakable. The compliance auditor who tracked every decimal point wasn't going to let her rewrite history this time.

“Keep Ezra out of this,” I said, my voice dropping an octave into a cold, dangerous register. “One more word about my son, and I won't just let Avery Frost handle the civil suit. I will personally walk these bank statements down to the district attorney's economic crimes bureau before the clock strikes eight.”