My dad laughed and told me to walk myself down the aisle because I was marrying a nobody. Mom sat beside him in the back row while I walked alone, gripping my bouquet. Then the chapel doors opened, and thirty strangers in matching grey lined the aisle before one faced my father and said, “Sir—”

Two weeks after the wedding, I received an official notice from the Charleston County Detention Center.

My father had requested an inmate visit. His attorney, a high-priced defense lawyer named Arthur Pendelton whom Dad had managed to hire using a remaining offshore legal retainer, had called me three times, claiming that Richard was experiencing severe heart palpitations and desperately needed to speak with his daughter before his formal arraignment.

I sat in the passenger seat of Ethan's Honda, staring at the bleak brick exterior of the detention center. The sky was grey, heavy with incoming rain.

"You don't have to go in there, Maya," Ethan said softly, his hand resting over mine on the gearshift. "He doesn't have any power over you anymore. You don't owe him a second of your time."

I looked at the high wire fences surrounding the facility. "I know I don't owe him anything, Ethan. But if I don't look him in the eye now, while he’s behind glass, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering if I was still afraid of him."

Ethan nodded, leaning over to kiss my forehead. "I'll be right here in the parking lot."

Ten minutes later, I was sitting in a narrow visitation booth separated by thick, scratched bulletproof glass. The heavy metal door on the inmate side clicked open, and a guard escorted my father into the room.

I barely recognized him.

The polished, commanding man who used to command boardrooms was gone. He wore an orange jump suit that was two sizes too big for his sagging shoulders. His hair was uncombed, white stubble covered his jawline, and his posture was stooped.

He sat down on the metal stool, picked up the plastic telephone receiver, and pressed it to his ear.

I slowly picked up my phone.

"Maya," Dad said. His voice was raspy, stripped of its grand booming resonance. "Thank God you came. Your mother won't answer my calls. Caleb hung up on my lawyer. You have to help me."

"Help you with what, Dad?" I asked, keeping my tone entirely flat.

"Pendelton needs two hundred thousand dollars to post bond for my state court release," Dad said hurriedly, pressing his face closer to the glass. "There’s a small safety deposit box at the First National Bank on Broad Street. It’s under your name, Maya! I set it up five years ago using your social security number. There’s gold bullion and cash inside. Go to the bank, open the box, bring the cash to Pendelton, and get me out of this hole!"

I sat back in my chair, staring at him in absolute, horror-stricken awe.

Even now, sitting in a jail cell facing federal fraud and felony corruption charges, he wasn't asking how I was doing. He wasn't asking how my mother was surviving without a home. He wasn't apologizing for ruining my wedding day or calling my husband a nobody.

He was asking me to commit a federal felony to bail him out of jail using money he had stashed in my name without my consent.

"You used my identity to open an offshore tax-evasion box," I said, the realization settling heavily in my chest.

"It was to protect the family asset!" Dad argued, his eyes flashing with a sudden, desperate anger. "I did it for you and Caleb! If the federal government takes everything, that box is all we have left! Go get the key from my study desk—"

"No," I cut him off.

Dad froze. "What did you say?"

"No, Dad," I said, leaning closer to the glass, looking straight into his bloodshot eyes. "I’m not going to the bank. I’m going to call Investigator Vance at SLED and tell him about the safety deposit box on Broad Street."

Dad’s mouth opened, his face turning an explosive shade of purple. "You traitorous little bitch!" he screamed into the phone, slamming his free fist against the bulletproof glass. "I gave you everything! I paid for your private schools! I gave you a life of luxury! And you align yourself with that dirtbag public defender to put your own father in prison?!"

"You didn't give me a life, Dad," I said, my voice ice-cold. "You gave me a cage. You bought things to control people. You thought everyone had a price tag because you were hollow inside."

"You are nothing without my money!" Dad roared, the guard behind him taking a step forward and resting a hand on his taser. "You're living in a cheap house with a nobody! You ruined this family!"

I slowly lifted the phone away from my ear. I looked at the angry, broken old man pounding on the glass, screaming insults that no longer had the power to touch me.