“A week after I said no, you got jumped. Remember?” I looked up at him, my heart aching. “Outside your house. You thought it was random vandalism.”

“I remember.” His voice was ice.

“It wasn’t random. The next day, Loretta sat in my living room, drinking tea, and said, ‘Heard your daddy got roughed up. Dangerous times. Next time, it could be worse. Maybe he won’t walk away.’ She was smiling, Dad. She was smiling.”

My father’s jaw muscle feathered, a rhythmic pulsing of suppressed rage.

“Then Darnell showed me the video,” I continued, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “A video of me screaming at Miles, shaking him. It’s a deep-fake, or an edit. They spliced audio from when I was shouting at the dog, mixed it with out-of-context clips. But it looks real. They said they’d send it to Child Protective Services. They said they’d take Miles.”

“Monsters,” my father hissed.