As we drove, the town slid past in a blur of Christmas lights and wealth. Designer stores, art galleries, warmly lit restaurants full of people in cashmere drinking wine that cost more than my monthly London rent.

“How’s work?” she asked, hands steady on the wheel.

I watched the snow swirl in the headlights. “Busy. We just wrapped a big pharmaceutical case.”

“Still chasing criminals?” She said it lightly, but there was an edge there, a faint sneer.

“Still,” I said. “Someone’s got to make sure the numbers add up.”

She shifted, uncomfortable. Silence stretched for a moment.

“We’re proud of you,” she said finally.

“No, you’re not,” I replied, just as gently. “You’re proud of what I can do for you.”

Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. The jazz station humming softly from the car’s speakers filled the space between us.

“I invited you here because I want us to start over,” she said after a moment. “We’re family. We’ve all made mistakes.”

My jaw clicked. I could feel the words rising in my throat—
Forging my signature wasn’t a mistake, it was a crime
—but I swallowed them.

I hadn’t flown eight hours across an ocean to have the same old argument in a car.

“You said Caleb’s trying to get his life together,” I said instead. “What does that mean?”

Her mouth pinched. “He’s… had a rough year. Some bad influences. But he’s home now. He just needs support.”

Support. Right. The way a parasite needs a host.

We turned off the main road, winding up into the hills. The houses grew farther apart, larger, more ostentatious. Our old house appeared around a bend—a hulking, dark-wood beast with warm light bleeding from its windows and smoke curling from the chimney.

I felt something twist inside me. It looked almost exactly the same as the last time I’d seen it. The iced-over trees, the wide porch, the antlers mounted above the door.

A ghost, preserved.

As we pulled into the circular driveway, fat flakes of snow began to fall, swirling chaotically in the wind. The blizzard the weather report had warned about was starting.

My mother put the car in park and turned to me with an almost shy smile. “Thank you for coming, Jasmine. Truly.”

I held her gaze.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

She exhaled. “Let’s get you inside before you freeze.”

The house swallowed me like a mouth.

Warmth hit my face as soon as I stepped through the door—heat from the fire, from the radiators, from the sheer size of the space. The familiar scent of wood smoke, lemon polish, and something savory from the kitchen wrapped around me.

For a moment, it was almost nice.

I stamped snow off my boots, unbuttoned my coat, and stepped deeper into the foyer. My carry-on wheels hummed over the hardwood. From the living room, I could see the fire crackling in the floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace, flames reflecting in the glass of the big windows that overlooked the slope dropping down toward town.

“Dad?” I called.

“Close the door,” my father’s voice snapped from the living room.

Not
welcome home.
Not
hi.

“Sure,” I said.

I moved to swing the door closed. As I did, I caught a glimpse of the driveway—wind whipping snow sideways, the sky already a dark bruise.

The moment the latch clicked, I heard the metallic scrape behind me.

I turned just in time to see my father twist the deadbolt and slide a key from the lock. He pocketed it without looking at me.

The sound of the lock sliding home was louder than it should have been. It echoed in my ribs.

My hands tightened around the handle of my suitcase.

“Is that really necessary?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. He walked past me, the faint clink of ice in his glass preceding him, and stepped into the living room.

I followed, each step measured.

Marcus Sterling still cut an imposing figure from a distance. He was tall, six-two, shoulders broad under his flannel shirt. From the right angle, with the right lighting, he could have been the same charismatic man who used to charm investors with big smiles and bigger lies.

Up close, the facade was cracked. His hair was thinner, grayer. His face had gone soft, red veins threading his cheeks, eyes ringed with shadows. The hand holding his tumbler of scotch trembled slightly before he knocked back a swallow.

“Hello, Dad,” I said.

He looked me over like I was a used car he was considering buying. “You’re late,” he said finally.

“My flight landed on time. The roads—”

“Always an excuse,” he muttered, turning away.

My mother swept past me into the living room, her heels ticking on the floor. She went to the mahogany coffee table in front of the fireplace, where something lay neatly centered: a thick stack of papers, crisp and white, with a pen placed carefully on top.

My stomach, which had been one cohesive, steady organ up until that moment, turned into ice.

“What’s this?” I asked, even though I already knew.

Eleanor carefully aligned the stack with the edge of the table. “Just some paperwork we need you to sign,” she said brightly. “Nothing much. Formalities.”

“Formalities,” I repeated.

A shape moved in my periphery. Caleb lounged in an armchair near the fire, his boots up on an ottoman, a hunting knife in one hand. He used the tip to clean under his fingernails, completely at ease. His hair was longer than the last time I’d seen him, tied back in a messy knot. He wore a faded hoodie and jeans that probably cost more than my first London rent.

“Hey, Sis,” he said, grinning. “Long time.”

I ignored him and walked to the table.

The pages were thick, the kind of heavy paper lawyers favored when they wanted something to feel important. As I drew closer, I saw the title printed in bold at the top of the first page.

VOLUNTARY CONSERVATORSHIP AGREEMENT.

My name appeared beneath it. FULL NAME: JASMINE LEE STERLING.

I didn’t pick it up.

“A conservatorship.” I said the word slowly, tasting it.

My mother nodded, lips trembling in what she probably thought looked like concern. “Just to help you, honey. You’ve been under so much stress over there. All that… crime stuff. It can’t be healthy. You sounded so… unstable on the phone.”

“I sounded fine,” I said calmly.

She shook her head quickly, hair shimmering. “You called me three times in one night, Jasmine. You barely made sense. You talked about—about debt and fraud and someone trying to ruin you—”

“I was telling you about a case I was working,” I said. “You asked.”

She ignored that. “Your father and I have been so worried. You’re all alone in that big city. No support. No one to help you if you… break.”

Break.

Such a delicate word, to describe what she wanted: to cut me open and crawl inside my life.

My father set his glass down on the side table with a deliberate thunk. “Save it,” he said to her. Then to me, “We’re not playing games. Sign the papers.”

“You flew me across an ocean to sign away my autonomy?” My voice came out flat, almost curious. “That’s… elaborate, even for you.”

“You flew here on your own, Jasmine,” my mother said quickly, arms spreading in mock helplessness. “You accepted the ticket. Nobody forced you to get on that plane.”

A clever little pre-emptive defense, that. If I later tried to argue coercion, they could say I’d come willingly.

My father walked around the coffee table so we were facing each other across it. The fire crackled behind him, casting his face in flickering light. The bottle of vintage wine I’d brought from Heathrow—some ludicrously expensive Bordeaux I’d hoped might act as neutral ground—suddenly felt heavy and ridiculous in my hand.

“What’s this conservatorship supposed to cover?” I asked.

He glanced at my mother.

She cleared her throat. “We’ve spoken to a lawyer,” she said. “It’s very simple. You just acknowledge you’ve been struggling with your mental health. That you’ve made… unsound financial decisions. You give us authority to manage your investments. Just to protect you.”

“Because I’m… crazy?” I said.

She flinched. “Don’t say it like that. You know mental health issues run in the family. Your grandmother—”

“Had untreated depression and a husband who cheated on her for thirty years,” I said. “That’s not a genetic curse, that’s cause and effect.”

My father slammed his palm down on the papers. I didn’t flinch, but my fingers tightened around the neck of the wine bottle.

“You sign,” he said, his voice low and dangerous, “or you don’t leave this house.”

The fire popped loudly. Snow beat against the windows.

Caleb’s knife made a soft
tink-tink-tink
against the metal buckle of his belt as he tapped it idly.

“And why,” I asked, each word carefully enunciated, “would I ever sign a document that hands you control of everything I’ve built for myself?”

My mother’s facade cracked, just a little. The sweetness drained from her features, leaving something sharper, more desperate.

“Because they’re going to kill him,” she whispered.

Silence pressed in. For a moment, all I heard was the wind and the faint ticking of the antique clock over the mantle.

“Who?” I asked.

She looked at Caleb. Her voice shook. “The people he owes money to.”

Caleb gave a short, humorless laugh, lifting his hands in a see-what-you-did? gesture. “I got a little overextended,” he said. “It happens. But Dad said you’re doing great. Big job. Big money. You never help anyone out. You owe us, Jaz. We gave you everything.”

They always said that.
We gave you everything
—as if feeding and clothing a child was a gift, not the bare minimum.

“You owe us,” my father repeated calmly. “You wouldn’t be where you are without our sacrifices. We kept this family together. We gave you a good name, a good house. We took out loans in your name so you could have what you needed. And now it’s time you paid that back.”

The room seemed to tilt slightly.

“You took out loans in my name because your credit was in the gutter,” I said. “And you needed a clean identity to keep the banks feeding your addiction. You forged my signature for a fifty-thousand-dollar car I never drove. I did pay you back. I paid until my credit score could finally crawl out of the sewer.”

I took a breath, tasting smoke and old anger.

“I am not your backup bank account anymore.”

My father’s expression didn’t change. “It’s very simple,” he said. “Your brother owes money to some very unpleasant people. If we don’t produce the funds, they will collect in other ways. Fingers, eyes…” He smiled faintly. “People like that love families. So many pressure points. They’ve already been calling. Threatening. We’re trapped, Jasmine. Unless…”

“Unless I hand you the keys to my life,” I said. “So you can use my accounts as collateral.”

“Unless you let your family help you manage your burden,” my mother corrected, reaching for the compassionate tone she’d tried on earlier. It sounded worse now, stretched thin. “You’re tired. Overworked. You can’t possibly keep track of everything. Let us shoulder some of that weight.”

My fingers went numb around the bottle neck.

“You’re shaking,” my mother said quickly, seizing on it. “You see? You’re not well. This is exactly why—”

I laughed.

The sound startled me. It wasn’t my usual laugh—quiet, dry. This one was sharp, almost musical, and it rang around the high-ceilinged room like a piece of glass hitting stone.