The Victorian on 47 Maple Avenue looked like a postcard under the falling Seattle snow.

The living room had ceased to be a home; it had become an abattoir of egos.

Uncle Tony was breathing heavily, his face purple, his fingers flexing as if he wanted nothing more than to wrap them around Marcus’s throat. "Thirty thousand dollars, Robert! I took out an equity line on my own home! You sat at my Thanksgiving table, carved the turkey, and told me that Marcus was going to make our entire family wealthy!"

"I didn't know!" Dad wailed, looking up from the stairs with wild, pleading eyes. "Tony, I swear to God, I thought the boy was a genius! He showed me the investor slide decks! He had logos! He had an office address in downtown Bellevue!"

"That office address was a $49-a-month virtual mailbox above a UPS Store!" Derek shouted, pulling up his phone, his thumb flying furiously across the screen. "Look at this! I just looked up the address on his business card! Suite 400 is literally a wall of metal PO boxes! You let me give him five grand from my college fund, Uncle Robert! You told me it was safer than a certificate of deposit!"

"Derek, please," Mom sobbed from the dining table, her apron soaked through with tears. "We’re your family. We’ll figure this out. We can pool our resources..."

"Pool our resources?" Aunt Patricia sneered, her voice dripping with pure venom as she rounded on my mother. "With what, Linda? You don't have a dime! Your house belongs to Olivia! Your son is a con artist who belongs in a cell! You’ve been living in a fantasy world on your daughter's dime while treating her like a second-class citizen!"

Patricia turned to me, her expression instantly shifting into a sickening, sycophantic grimace. "Olivia... darling. You knew about this? You knew Marcus was doing this?"

"I knew Marcus was a fraud three years ago, Aunt Patricia," I said, holding her gaze with unblinking certainty. "And every time I tried to warn you—every time I suggested that Dad’s lifestyle didn't match his pension—what did you say to me?"

Patricia blinked, her mouth opening slightly.

"You called me jealous," I reminded her. "You told me that women in corporate architecture always become bitter because they don't know how to celebrate a man’s vision. You told me at Easter dinner two years ago that I should learn to be more supportive like Marcus."

Patricia’s cheeks burned crimson. She looked down at her leather boots, incapable of producing a single word.

"And you, Derek," I said, turning to my cousin. "Last Christmas, when I gave you that $500 gift card to help with your college textbooks, you laughed and said Marcus gave you an iPad, so my gift felt a little 'cheap.' Where did you think Marcus got the money for that iPad? He charged it to a credit card he opened using Dad’s social security number."

Dad’s head snapped up. "What?"

Detective Vance tapped her tablet. "Identity theft report filed with the credit bureaus in August of 2022, Mr. Campbell. Chase Sapphire card. $14,000 balance currently in default. Didn't you wonder why your credit score dropped to 480?"

Dad looked like he had been kicked in the stomach. He turned his gaze slowly, agonizingly toward Marcus, who was leaning against the mantle, chewing his fingernails until they bled.

"Marcus..." Dad whispered, his voice cracking into a dry, broken rattle. "You... you took my social?"

"I had to pay the server costs, Dad!" Marcus shouted, his eyes darting frantically around the room, finding not a single friendly face. "The AWS hosting fees were six thousand dollars a month! If the servers went down, the demo wouldn't work for the angel investors! I was doing it for *us*!"

"You did it for yourself," Uncle Tony growled, pulling his coat off the rack near the door. "Patricia, grab your purse. We're going straight to our attorney's house. And then we're going to the precinct."

"Tony, wait!" Dad begged, dragging himself up from the stairs on trembling knees. "Don't go to the police! We can work this out! We're brothers!"

"We aren't brothers anymore, Robert," Tony said, his voice flat and dead. "You raised a thief, and you let him rob your own family while you threw your daughter into the snow. Look at what you did out there!"

Tony pointed a thick finger toward the open front door, where the Christmas gifts still lay scattered in the dirty, freezing slush.

"She paid for your wife’s hip," Tony said, shaking his head in absolute disgust. "She paid for your roof. And you kicked her into the cold because she wouldn't let your golden boy steal her house too. You make me sick."

Tony wrenched the door open. Patricia followed him without looking back once. Derek lingered for half a second, his eyes glaring at Marcus with pure, unadulterated hatred.

"See you in court, cousin," Derek spat, before slamming the heavy oak door behind him.

The slam of the door resonated through the silent, cavernous house like a gavel falling.

There were only four of us left now: Dad, Mom, Marcus, and me. Along with Detective Vance and the two officers, whose presence suddenly felt suffocatingly real.

The house was cold now. The heat seemed to have fled through the open door along with the guests.

"Now," Detective Vance said, stepping into the center of the foyer and looking at the grandfather clock. "It is 8:45 PM. By order of the King County Superior Court, this structure is to be vacated by all unauthorized occupants immediately."

Dad collapsed back against the wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the floorboards once more.

"No," Dad whispered. "No... please. It’s Christmas Eve. Where are we supposed to go?"