The turkey was still warm when my father looked across the Thanksgiving table and calmly told me I needed to move out.

The breaking point for Wren came three days before Christmas.

She had managed to stay under the radar at the house by working double shifts at the bookstore and staying late in the public library, studying for her final high school exams. But with Dad’s bank accounts frozen by the tax levy and Brent’s furious realization that I was never coming back, the predators turned their eyes toward the only remaining prey in the house.

It was 9:45 PM on a Tuesday when my phone vibrated with an incoming FaceTime call from Wren.

I answered immediately.

The screen flickered on, revealing Wren sitting on the floor of her bedroom closet, her back pressed against a stack of storage boxes. The closet light was off; the only illumination came from her phone screen. Her eyes were red, swollen, and leaking silent tears.

“Wren?” I whispered, sitting up in bed. “What happened? Talk to me.”

“Dad took my car keys, Cass,” she choked out, her voice barely a breath. “And Brent… Brent went through my room while I was at work.”

A cold fury ignited in my chest. “What did they take?”

“Brent found my cash envelope,” she sobbed, pulling her knees to her chest. “I had six hundred and forty dollars hidden inside my biology textbook. It was my graduation money and my savings from the bookstore for my college deposit. He took it. He told Mom he found it on the counter and used it to pay the water bill and buy groceries.”

“Where are they now?”

“Mom and Dad are downstairs screaming at each other about the tax lawyer,” she whispered. “Dad told me if I don't sign over my paycheck from the bookstore this Friday to help pay the mortgage, he’s going to take my car title and sell it to a scrap dealer. He said since I’m seventeen, the car belongs to him anyway.”

The car was a 2008 Toyota Corolla that our late grandmother had left specifically to Wren before she passed away. Dad had put his name on the registration because Wren had been fifteen at the time of Grandma’s death.

“Wren, listen to me very carefully,” I said, my voice steady, calm, and commanding. “When do you turn eighteen?”

“January 4th,” she sniffed. “Two weeks.”

“Do you have your social security card and your birth certificate?”

“They’re in Dad’s fire safe in the office.”

“Forget them. We can order certified replacements from the vital records office. Do you have your backpack?”

“Yes.”

“Pack three changes of clothes, your laptop, your school chargers, and Grandma Florence’s silver locket. Nothing else. Put your sneakers on right now.”

She wiped her face with the sleeve of her oversized sweater. “Cass… what about the car?”

“Leave the car for tonight. We’ll get the car legally once you turn eighteen. Can you get out through your bedroom window onto the porch roof?”

“I’ve done it before.”

“Good. I am getting in my car right now. I will be parked at the corner of Sycamore and Elm—three houses down, by the drainage ditch where the streetlights are burned out—in exactly fifteen minutes. Do not use the front stairs. Go out the window, drop off the porch into the hydrangeas, and walk straight to my car. Do you understand?”

She swallowed hard, nodding on the screen. “Yes.”

“I love you, Wren. Fifteen minutes.”

I hung up, threw on my winter coat and boots, grabbed my car keys, and was out the door before Simone could even ask where I was going.

The drive across town took twelve agonizing minutes.

The rain had turned to sleet, peppering my windshield like buckshot. Sycamore Crest was dark and silent when I turned the corner with my headlights switched off, coasting to a halt beneath the dripping branches of the massive willow oak at the corner of Elm.

I kept the engine running, the heater blowing warm air, and my eyes glued to the rearview mirror.

Two minutes passed. Then three.

Every second felt like an hour. My hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turned white. If Dad or Brent caught her climbing out that window—

A shadow darted through the gap in the privacy fence at the corner lot.

It was a small figure, hunched against the sleet, carrying a battered green Jansport backpack.

Wren.

She was running in a low, panicked crouch. She reached the passenger side of my Civic, ripped the door open, threw herself into the seat, and slammed the door shut.

“Go,” she gasped, her teeth chattering violently. “Go, Cass, go!”

I shifted into drive, hit the gas, and turned the headlights on as we sped away from the neighborhood.

I looked over at my baby sister.

Her hair was plastered to her forehead with freezing rain. Her canvas sneakers were soaked through with mud. But in her lap, clutched tightly in both hands, was Grandma Florence’s silver locket.

She looked at me, her chest heaving, and then she buried her face in her hands and let out a long, ragged, shuddering sob.

I reached across the console, grabbed her trembling hand, and held it tight.

“You’re safe,” I told her, my voice thick with emotion. “You’re never going back to that house again. I swear to God, Wren, you are done with them.”

“They took everything, Cass,” she wept. “They took your four years, they took my savings, they ruined everything.”

“They took money,” I corrected her firmly, turning the Civic onto the highway that led back toward Simone’s side of the city. “Money can be made back. What they didn't get to keep is *us*.”

That night, Wren slept in the guest room bed, tucked beneath three thick blankets, while I slept on the living room sofa.

Before I closed my eyes, I sent a single text to Marcus Vance.

*Wren is with me. She turns eighteen in fourteen days. The moment she does, I want the papers served on Donald and Brent. All of them.*

Marcus replied at 6:00 AM the next morning with two words: