My father’s voice cracked across the dining room so sharply that even the television in the living room suddenly seemed quiet.

On Monday morning, the grey skies followed us across the state line into Indiana.

We arrived at the Marion County Judicial Center at 10:00 AM. Marcus Vance had driven down from Columbus to meet us, having already filed the necessary paperwork with the local prosecutor's office to ensure our control over the seized assets.

The county jail was a grim, brutalist concrete structure.

We were led into a small, sterile visitation room separated by thick, reinforced glass.

When the heavy steel door on the opposite side opened, Rebecca walked in, escorted by a female guard. She was wearing an orange jumpsuit. Her hair, usually perfectly styled, was greasy and tied back in a messy bun. She had no makeup on, and her skin looked sallow under the fluorescent lights.

Behind her came Mason, who was being held in an adjacent administrative room with a social worker.

When Rebecca saw Dad and me sitting at the table, her eyes flared—not with shame, but with fury.

She picked up the wall-mounted telephone handset on her side. Dad reached for his, but I put my hand over his arm, stopping him.

I picked up the telephone first.

"Daniel," Rebecca hissed into the receiver, her voice dripping with venom. "You absolute bastard. Look what you did to me! You put your own sister in jail!"

"You put yourself in jail, Rebecca," I said calmly, holding the receiver loosely. "You committed grand theft, identity fraud, and forged Dad's signature on a home equity loan."

"He owed me that money!" she screamed, her voice buzzing harsh through the earpiece. "I devoted three years of my life to sitting in that damn house, listening to him whine about his knees and his taxes! I deserved that capital to restart my business in Indianapolis!"

"By stealing his entire life savings?" I asked. "By leaving him with tax liens and a second mortgage?"

"He has plenty of money!" she sneered. "He was going to leave half of it to you anyway! You, with your boring little townhouse and your pathetic little accounting job! You don't need it! I needed it!"

Dad, watching through the glass, could hear her shrill voice leaking from the earpiece. He slowly pulled the secondary receiver from the wall hook and put it to his ear.

"Rebecca..." Dad spoke, his voice trembling violently. "How could you?"

Rebecca looked at Dad through the glass. For a fraction of a second, a shadow of guilt crossed her face, but it was immediately replaced by contempt.

"Oh, stop crying, Dad," she scoffed. "You're so dramatic. Just drop the charges. Tell the police it was a corporate misunderstanding. Tell them you authorized the transfer. You know you won't let me go to prison."

Dad stared at her as if seeing her for the first time in his life. "You... you don't love me at all, do you? You never did."

"I loved what you could do for me," Rebecca said brutally, no longer bothering to hide her true nature now that the mask had been ripped off. "You were easy. A few compliments, pretending to care about your stupid engineering stories, telling you that Mason was just like you... you handed me everything on a silver platter. And you treated Daniel like dirt just to keep me happy!"

Dad flinched as if struck by a whip. Tears poured down his face, but this time, something shifted in his eyes. The weak, broken old man who had spent forty-eight hours weeping suddenly hardened.

"I gave you everything, Rebecca," Dad said, his voice dropping an octave, becoming dangerously quiet and steady. "I sacrificed my relationship with my son. I humiliated my grandson in front of his family. I turned my back on the only people who actually loved me... all for you."

"Yeah, well, you were an idiot," Rebecca snapped. "Now tell the lawyer to pull the filing so I can get Mason and get out of here."

"No," Dad said.

Rebecca blinked, stunned. "What did you say?"

"No," Dad repeated firmly, looking her dead in the eye. "I am not pulling the charges. You are going to trial, Rebecca. If you go to prison, you go to prison. I will not spend another dime on your defense, I will not pay your bail, and I will not protect you from the law."

"Dad! Are you insane?!" Rebecca screamed, pounding her hand against the glass. "I'm your daughter! What about Mason?!"

"Mason is my grandson," Dad said coldly. "And unlike you, I am not going to raise him to be a monster. He is coming home with me and Daniel. We are going to get him the help he needs, and we are going to teach him what accountability means—something I failed to teach you."

"You can't do this to me!" Rebecca shrieked, her face twisting into a mask of pure rage as the guard grabbed her arms to drag her back toward the door. "Daniel! Tell him! Dad, don't leave me here! Dad!"

Dad slowly hung up the telephone receiver.

He turned his back on the glass before she was even pulled through the door.