My sister pushed me through a glass door at my wedding, but the hospital scan revealed an even darker secret: she had fractured my skull when we were children.

They didn't call again that evening. Instead, they arrived in person at eight o'clock the next morning.

I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking peppermint tea, trying to ignore the deep, persistent ache in my left shoulder, when the front doorbell rang persistently. Declan looked through the smart-doorbell camera on his tablet.

"Your father, your mother, and your uncle Leander," Declan said, his face darkening. "They brought the patriarch."

Uncle Leander was the eldest brother of the Avery family. He controlled the family trust, owned half the commercial real estate on Broad Street, and treated everyone in the family like mid-level employees in his personal empire. When Leander was summoned, it meant the family was preparing to enforce compliance by any means necessary.

"Let them in," I told Declan.

"Sloane, you don't have to face them," Declan said softly.

"I spent twenty-two years thinking I had a weak skull because I was clumsy," I said, standing up and straightening my posture despite the pain. "I want to hear what Uncle Leander has to say."

Declan opened the door. The three of them filed into the foyer like an invading army. My father looked haggard, dark bags hanging beneath his bloodshot eyes. My mother was clutching her designer handbag against her stomach like a shield. Uncle Leander walked in with his silver-tipped cane, his expression carved from old Virginia arrogance.

"Sit down, Sloane," Uncle Leander commanded, gesturing toward my own living room sofa as if he held the deed to my house.

"I'll stand," I said. "And so will you. Say what you came to say."

Leander’s eyes narrowed. "This family does not air its dirty laundry in courtrooms, Sloane. Your grandfather built the Avery name over seventy years. I will not have it dragged through the tabloids because of a domestic squabble between two sisters who drank too much champagne."

"I don't drink champagne," I said coldly. "I was drinking club soda. And this isn't a squabble. Vesper committed aggravated assault."

"Vesper is twenty-four years old!" my father interjected, stepping forward with his hands outstretched. "She has a modeling contract pending with a national athletics brand, Sloane! If she gets indicted, her life is over! Completely over!"

"And what about my life, Dad?" I asked, looking straight into his eyes. "When she shoved me down the stone stairs when I was eight, was my life over? When she cracked my skull and you told the doctors I slipped on wet grass so she wouldn't miss her regional tournament?"

Uncle Leander tapped his cane against the hardwood floor with a sharp, resonant thud.

"That was twenty years ago," Leander snapped. "It was handled within the family, as it should have been. You survived. You went to college. You married a wealthy man. You have suffered no lasting harm."

"I had a hairline fracture that never healed correctly," I shouted, my voice finally breaking with the accumulated grief of a lifetime. "I suffered from migraines for fifteen years! You made me think I was broken, that I was defective, while you spent every dime of the family trust carting Vesper across the country for her tournaments and her vanity projects!"