The black Audi was always too clean.

It waited two blocks from school every afternoon, tucked under a different tree each day—Hank's attempt at subtlety. Karyn adjusted her baseball cap, kept her eyes down, and walked quickly, as if the faster she moved, the less real all of it was.

Hank held the door. The cabin sealed around her like a vault: cedar and cool leather and the absolute silence of money insulating itself from the world.

Her phone vibrated before she'd even caught her breath.

Restricted number.

She pressed it to her ear and rearranged her voice. Softened it. Made it compliant.

"Hello?"

"How was school today." Not a question. Eduardo never asked questions—he issued statements and waited to see what you did with them.

"Fine." She watched the street slide past the tinted window. "Just normal classes."

She didn't mention the new foster brother. Didn't mention Jadyn moving into her house, sitting at her table, threading himself into her family like wire through bone. Lying to Eduardo was Russian roulette, but the alternative—the questions, the cold calculation behind his eyes when he decided something was a problem he needed to solve—was worse.

"I'll be back in the country next week," Eduardo said. "Be ready."

The line went dead.

Karyn sat in the silence of his car for the remaining blocks, her knuckles white against her thigh. She thanked Hank and stepped out a street away from home, the way she always did, and walked the rest of the way back into her other life.

The front door was cracked open.

Through the gap: David laughing. Jadyn's voice, low and respectful, curling around the older man's ego like smoke. Sharon's pleased hum from the kitchen.

Karyn stood on the dark porch and didn't go in.

For a moment—just one—she let herself feel it. The suffocation of it. The complete absence of anywhere safe to stand.

Then she put her key in the lock and walked through the door.