Part 2: My stepdaughter insulted me at Sunday dinner and told me I was nobody, completely unaware that her university tuition, apartment rent, and luxury car insurance were paid entirely out of my personal bank account.

The evening sun was casting long, bloody shadows across the front lawn when my car pulled into the driveway.

Darcy's sedan was parked in the center. Inside the house, music was playing softly from the kitchen. When Shay and I walked through the front door, the smell of roasted garlic and rosemary filled the hallway.

Darcy came around the corner wearing an apron, holding a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and two crystal glasses. He had a nervous, appeasing smile plastered across his face.

"Elena! You're home early," he said quickly, his eyes darting to Shay standing behind me. His smile faltered slightly, his eyes narrowing with sudden unease. "Shay? What are you doing here? I thought you were at the campus library."

Neither of us moved.

"I made your favorite," Darcy continued, trying to force the charm back into his voice, though his hands shook slightly as he set the wine bottle down on the credenza. "Beef tenderloin. I figured... we've all been under so much stress this week. We said things we didn't mean. I wanted us to sit down, open a good bottle of wine, and talk about how we can move forward as a family."

"Where is the two hundred thousand dollars, Darcy?" I asked.

The words dropped into the warm room like blocks of dry ice.

Darcy froze. The color drained from his face so fast it looked as if his heart had stopped beating. "What... what did you say?"

Shay stepped forward, pulling a thick envelope of certified court records and bank liquidation statements from her tote bag, slapping them down onto the marble table right next to the wine glasses.

"The custodial trust, Dad," Shay said, her voice shaking with a terrifying mixture of rage and grief. "The money Mom sent for my college. Where is it?"

Darcy stared at the papers. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He backed away half a step, his shoulder bumping against the kitchen doorframe.

"Elena, Shay, listen to me," he stammered, raising his palms in surrender. "That was... that was a complicated legal settlement. There were debts... there were things you didn't understand back then—"

"You stole my money," Shay screamed, tears breaking out anew. "You stole my college fund, you lied to me about Mom, and then you had Elena pay for everything while you made me treat her like an enemy so I wouldn't ask questions!"

"That's not true!" Darcy yelled, his face turning an ugly, cornered purple. "I did what I had to do to survive! I kept a roof over your head! I gave you a life!"

"I gave her a life, Darcy," I said, stepping between him and Shay. "With my money. In my house. While you played the doting father on a budget funded entirely by fraud."

I reached into my briefcase and pulled out a second folder, tossing it onto the table on top of the trust documents.

"Those are divorce papers, Darcy," I stated with absolute, cold finality. "And an emergency order of eviction. You have forty-eight hours to vacate this property."

Darcy stared at the documents, his chest heaving, realization finally dawning on him that his game was entirely over. But instead of breaking down or begging, something dark and desperate flickered in his eyes.

He slowly looked up from the table, his gaze shifting from me to Shay, and then back to me. A bitter, twisted smirk began to form at the corner of his mouth.

"You think you're so smart, Elena," Darcy whispered, his voice dangerously low. "You think you pulled the rug out from under me? You think this whole thing started with a trust fund?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, tapping the screen before turning it toward us.

"Check your business portal, Elena. Check the corporate filings you signed last Tuesday when you were rushing to close your expansion deal."

My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit.

"What did you do?" I whispered.

Darcy's smile turned feral. "You made me a managing signatory on your corporate holding LLC three years ago so I could handle the real estate acquisitions, remember? While you were busy punishing Shay this week... I transferred the primary commercial deed of your downtown headquarters into my name."