Every rule, every expectation, every "because I love you" is a load-bearing wall.

He slides a document across the table. Not the acceptance letter. A different one. A "cohabitation agreement" drafted by his attorney. It outlines that as long as she lives in his home, she abides by every structure. Curfew. Dress code. Social schedule. Emotional availability.

Tonight, Chloe brings home a secret. A university acceptance letter—six hundred miles away. She hides it under her mattress, the same place she hides the diary that no longer writes about freedom, but about the quiet terror of disappointing the only parent she has left.

"Grow?" He interrupts, reaching across the table to take both her hands. His grip is warm, firm, inescapable. "You grow here, Chloe. Under this roof. In my sight. That’s what a loving home does. It protects you from your own bad decisions."

But safety, in David’s language, has a dialect of suffocation.

"You want to leave the loving home I built for you?" he asks, voice soft as a scalpel. His eyes glisten—not with anger, but with the profound betrayal of a man who has given everything.