Chapter 8 - Panic and Exposure
Panic erupted instantly.
"What is this? Turn it off! Turn it off right now!" my mother shrieked, lunging at the television remote like a madwoman, pressing buttons wildly, but the system was locked by 256-bit encryption that only my biometric key could override.
"Roger, what the hell is this?" shouted Dave, my father's business partner and longtime neighbor, stepping back as if my father carried a plague. "You stole forty-five grand from your injured daughter? For plastic surgery and luxury clothes?"
"It's a glitch! It's a hack! She's lying, she's a tech programmer, she fabricated this!" my father roared, his face purple with blind rage, pointing a trembling finger down at me where I still lay on the floor. "She's mentally unstable! Look at her, she's trying to ruin our family!"
Austin tried to grab my laptop off the desk to smash it, but three guests physically blocked him, their expressions filled with utter disgust.
"Get away from her, Austin," one of the neighborhood fathers said, his voice cold and steady. "I'm calling the police right now. This isn't a family dispute; this is grand larceny and elder... wait, no, this is financial abuse of a disabled dependent."
"Don't you dare call the cops!" Teresa screamed, bursting into hysterical tears as she clutched her tennis bracelet like it was a lifeline. "She planned this! She set us up!"
I pushed myself up slowly, leaning my weight against the sofa, ignoring the fiery agony in my leg. I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I looked directly at my father, who was now sweating profusely under the gaze of fifty people who would never look at him the same way again.
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"You took my future," I said, my voice carrying clearly across the silent room. "You took the money that was supposed to let me walk. But you forgot one thing, Dad. I'm a data analyst. I don't just build systems to protect money—I build systems to expose liars."
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder by the second as they turned onto our suburban street.
