way.”

Wyatt laughed, but it broke in the middle.

“You can’t be serious.”

Harrison didn’t blink.

“I am.

And before you start blaming your mother, understand something: I’ve seen the texts you sent me asking for money and threatening to ‘make everyone sorry’ when you didn’t get it.

I should have stepped in months ago.

That failure is mine.

This one is still yours.”

Wyatt’s gaze snapped to me.

“You’ve been talking about me behind my back?”

I felt something cold and steady settle in my chest.

“No, Wyatt.

I have been surviving you in my own house.”

He shoved his chair backward so hard it scraped the tile.

“This is insane.

One argument and suddenly I’m a criminal?”

“One slap,” I said.

“One threat.

Months of fear.

Stolen money.

Broken things.

Enough lies.”

His nostrils flared.

“You always make me the bad guy.”

“Because you keep doing bad things,” Harrison said.

The room went very still.

Wyatt looked like a man searching desperately for the old version of me, the one who would rush in and cushion every consequence.

When he couldn’t find her, anger took over.

He stepped toward me.

That was all it took.

The front door opened, and Deputy Mercer came in fast and calm, one hand raised, voice flat with authority.

“Stop right there.”

Wyatt froze.

She was a compact woman with tired eyes and the exact kind of tone that does not care about family dramas.

She positioned herself between him and me without making a spectacle of it.

“Your mother has reported an assault,” she said.

“You will lower your voice, gather your essentials, and leave this property peacefully.

If you threaten her again, touch her, or refuse to comply, I will arrest you.

Do you understand?”

For the first time that morning, I saw fear cut through his arrogance.

He looked at Harrison.

“You’d really do this to me?”

Harrison’s face did not move.

“No.

You did this.

We’re just refusing to cover it anymore.”

Wyatt went upstairs to pack with Deputy Mercer in the hall and Harrison behind him.

I stayed in the kitchen because I could not bear to watch him open drawers in the room where I had once tucked him in with clean pajamas and bedtime stories.

I stood at the sink and stared out at the yard until my vision blurred.

A few minutes later Harrison came back down carrying a small metal cash box from the top shelf of Wyatt’s closet.

He set it on the table and opened it.

Inside were my missing debit card, pieces of jewelry I had thought I had misplaced, and more cash than I kept in the house.

He looked at me, grief written all over his face.

“Leona…”

I sat down because my knees gave way.

When Wyatt came downstairs with a duffel bag, his anger had changed shape.

It was no longer the swaggering kind.

It was frightened, cornered, ugly.

He saw the open cash box on the table and swore.

“You were going through my stuff?”

“It was in my house,” I said.

My voice sounded almost unfamiliar to me.

“Like everything else you thought you had a right to.”

He looked at me then with a hatred so sharp it felt like another strike.

“You’re ruining