The text came at 2 a.m. like it was good news—my mother casually told me she’d sold my house while I was away, using an old legal document, and spent the money on my sister’s wedding. When I told her to stop the deal, she laughed—called me selfish, dramatic, ungrateful—and said I could “explain myself” at the family reunion.

Two real-estate agents were arrested in Newark. A title-office clerk in Baltimore flipped after twelve hours and a proffer agreement. A lawyer with expensive shoes and a taste for antique watches pretended not to know why his client companies kept buying houses at irrational speed near former witness zones. Vincent Castellano Jr. suddenly had people disappearing from his periphery. The task force had long suspected the organization was using civilian real-estate channels to locate safe sites. My parents had not invented the scheme. They had simply fed it with the confidence of people who thought the universe existed to convert their assumptions into cash.