Chapter 1

The phone call from my mom in Ohio was short.

"Jack, your father needs the surgery. The doctor says the sooner the better."

"I' m on it, Mom. Don' t worry."

I hung up and felt a familiar weight settle in my gut. It wasn' t the surgery, Dad would be fine. It was the money. The insurance deductible was five thousand dollars. I' d put that exact amount into a separate savings bucket in our joint account a month ago, labeling it "Dad's Health."

I pulled up the banking app on my phone. My heart stopped.

The main checking account was low, which was normal before payday.

But the savings bucket labeled "Dad's Health" was empty. Zero dollars and zero cents.

I scrolled through the transaction history. A single transfer, five days ago. $5,000 moved to checking, then an immediate Zelle payment for the same amount. The recipient: Kevin Moore. My brother-in-law.

I walked out of the bedroom. Brenda was on the couch, scrolling through Instagram, a half-smile on her face. Our daughter, Chloe, was playing with blocks on the floor, ignored.

"Brenda."

She didn' t look up. "Hmm?"

"Where' s the five thousand dollars?"

Her fingers stopped scrolling. She finally looked at me, her face a mask of innocence. "What five thousand?"

"The money for my dad' s surgery. It' s gone. It went to Kevin."

She put her phone down, her expression shifting from innocent to annoyed. "Oh, that. It wasn' t for your dad' s surgery, Jack. It was just savings. Kevin needed it."

"Needed it for what? Another one of his genius ideas that goes belly-up in six weeks?"

"It' s not a genius idea, it' s a down payment," she said, her voice rising. "He' s leasing a car. A Dodge Charger. It' s important for his image. He' s a brand."

I stared at her. A brand. Kevin, who was twenty-eight and lived with his mother, was a brand.

"A brand of what? Failure?"

"Don' t you talk about my brother like that!" she snapped, standing up. "He' s trying to build something! You have a good job, we have the money. It' s my money too! What' s the big deal?"

"The big deal, Brenda," I said, my voice dangerously calm, "is that my father needs surgery. That money was for him. The big deal is the seven grand you gave Kevin for his crypto scam last year. The big deal is the four grand for his drop-shipping website that never sold a single t-shirt. The big deal is the twelve hundred a month I didn' t know you were sending your mother to cover his rent and food. It adds up, Brenda. It' s tens of thousands of our dollars."

I was a union foreman. I worked hard for that money. I climbed steel in the dead of winter and baked on rooftops in the summer. Every dollar was earned with sweat and risk.

She just saw it as a number in an app, a resource to be funneled to her family.

"You' re being selfish," she said, her eyes welling up with tears. "Family is supposed to help family."

"I am helping my family," I said, pointing a finger at my own chest, then at our daughter who was now watching us with wide, scared eyes. "This is my family. You, me, and Chloe. Your brother is a grown man. He' s not our child."

"You just don' t understand."

"Oh, I understand perfectly. This was the last time, Brenda. The absolute last."