“Yes.” His eyes widened. “Julian?” I nodded. Dad looked toward the bathroom door.

“You don’t understand,” he whispered. “He’ll kill me.” The words landed harder than any scream could have.

My father had always been the strongest man I knew.

He had taught me how to ride a bicycle, how to change a tire, how to stand up for myself when someone tried to intimidate me.

Now he was staring at a wooden bathroom door as though it were the only thing keeping a monster from entering.

I crouched in front of him.

“Dad, look at me.”

He did.

“I came here for you.”

His chin trembled.

“I should have come sooner.”

“No,” he whispered. “You weren’t supposed to know.”

“I know.”

“I tried calling.”

“I know.”

His eyes filled with tears.

“He told me you hated me.”

My chest tightened.

“What?”

“Julian said you were ashamed of me. Said you didn’t want an old, confused father ruining your life.”

I closed my eyes for one second.

That was when I understood the cruelty of what they had done.

They hadn’t merely taken his money.

They had isolated him.

They had convinced him that the daughter who loved him had abandoned him.

And then they had made sure he couldn’t reach her.

A sound came from downstairs.

A man’s voice.

“Dad?”

My father’s entire body stiffened.

Julian.

I gently put one finger against my lips.

Dad nodded.

“Dad?” Julian called again. “Everything okay up there?”

I stood.

My heart was pounding, but my voice was calm.

“Everything’s fine.”

There was a silence.

Then Chloe laughed softly.

“Maybe he finally decided to take a bath.”

I heard footsteps moving toward the staircase.

My father grabbed my hand.

“Don’t.”

I squeezed his fingers.

“I won’t let him touch you.”

The footsteps stopped.

Then Julian called, “Elena?”

“Yes?”

“You’ve been up there a long time.”

“I was helping Dad.”

Another pause.

“You don’t need to worry about him. He gets confused.”

I looked at my father’s bruised wrists.

Then at the bathroom door.

And I realized something.

Julian wasn’t worried about Dad.

He was worried about what I might discover.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” I said.

The footsteps slowly moved away.

I waited until I couldn’t hear them anymore.

Then I whispered, “We need to leave.”

Dad shook his head.

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“No. The back door is locked. Julian keeps the key.”

I looked around the bathroom.

There was a tiny window above the bathtub.

Too small for my father.

But perhaps large enough for help to reach us.

I pulled out my phone.

One message had arrived.

STAY WHERE YOU ARE. HELP IS ON THE WAY. DO NOT ALERT THEM.

I exhaled.

For the first time that evening, I felt something other than fear.

Hope.

Then another message appeared.

This one was from an unknown number.

Elena, check the desk in your father’s bedroom. Second drawer. There’s something you need to see before the police arrive.

I stared at the screen.

My blood ran cold.

I hadn’t told anyone about the bedroom.

No one knew I was upstairs.

Except—

I slowly looked at my father.

“Dad?”

He swallowed.

“What?”

“Who else knows about that drawer?”

His face changed.

And for the first time since I had arrived, the fear in his eyes wasn’t directed at Julian.

It was directed at someone else.

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

I opened the bathroom door a fraction.

The hallway was empty.

We moved silently into my father’s bedroom.

The room smelled faintly of cedar and old books.

His desk sat beneath the window.

I opened the second drawer.

Inside were bank statements, photographs, medication records—and a small black notebook.

I picked it up.

The first page contained dates.

Amounts.

Initials.

And names.

Dozens of them.

My father’s handwriting appeared beneath every entry.