“I lived in your basement for three years,” I said. “Paid you rent. Repaired your furnace. Fixed your sink. Took your insults. Watched you throw a cake in the trash because it didn’t come from a bakery with a gold logo on the box. You told me I was cursed. You called me invisible. You let him”—I nodded once toward Jace—“talk about me like I was the hired help who forgot his place. You threw me out to protect the image of your lawn.”

My father stood too quickly, wobbling once before catching himself on the chair arm. “You can’t come here and speak to your mother that way.”

I turned to him. “I can speak any way I want. I don’t live under your floor anymore.”

That hit him harder than the acquisition had.

Because people like my father survive on the old architecture of obedience long after the structure itself is gone. Take away his financial leverage, his roof, his authority to make me small in front of others, and he had very little left except bluster and the faint smell of failure.

Jace recovered enough to scoff. “So what, you hit the lottery or something and now you think you’re God?”

I looked at him.

“That’s exactly what happened.”

He blinked. Hard.