“Family is family,” I agreed. “Which is exactly why what he did is so much worse than a stranger doing it. A stranger doesn’t know my address and my email and my whole life well enough to forge me. Only family can betray you that precisely.
I’m not paying the debt. I’m not smoothing this over. And I’m not going to keep being the strong one who absorbs whatever the rest of you decide to hand her.
You can have a relationship with me, Dad. But it’s going to be one where I’m a person, not a resource. Where ‘you’re strong’ is a compliment, not an assignment.
That’s the only version left. Take it or don’t.”
PART 5 — FINAL
That was two years ago.
I never paid the $24,000. It was never mine to pay. The forged contract died in the investigation, and Justin and Chloe were left holding the debt for the wedding they’d actually thrown — the intimate one, for the people who really mattered, which turned out to be a guest list that couldn’t cover its own bill.
