THE SPACE BETWEEN US.

No One Listens

I broke every speed limit getting home, Deb's words looping in my head the entire drive. Forged. Three days before she died. My mother could barely lift a spoon by then, let alone sign away everything she built.

I found Julian in the living room, scrolling his phone on the couch, alone for once. I grabbed the remote and killed the television before he even looked up.

"Hey, I was watching that."

"Julian, I need to talk to you. Right now."

"Can it wait? I'm kind of in the middle of something."

"No." I sat down across from him, forcing him to look at me. "It's about the studio. About Corinne."

He rolled his eyes so hard I felt it. "Not this again."

"Julian, listen to me. Deb called me. She found paperwork, transfer documents, signed with Mom's name three days before she died. Mom could barely hold a pen by then. Corinne forged her signature. She stole the studio."

His face went tight. "You're doing this again."

"Doing what? Telling you the truth?"

"Making everything about you being the victim. God, Mia, Mom just died and you're out here playing detective because you can't stand that someone else in this house gets along with people."

"This isn't about getting along. This is fraud."

"Do you hear yourself?" His voice cracked, somewhere between anger and something rawer underneath it. "Corinne has been the only person in this entire house who talks to me like I still matter. She remembers Mom. She tells me things nobody else bothers to. And you want me to believe she's some criminal mastermind forging documents."

"I have proof, Julian."

"You have Deb," he snapped. "Deb, who's probably terrified of losing her job now that Corinne's in charge. You'll believe anyone as long as it makes Corinne look evil."

"Because she is."

"You're bitter," he said, standing up, putting distance between us like I was something contagious. "You've been bitter since the day she walked in. You can't stand that Dad's happy, that I'm okay, that this family might actually survive without falling apart."

"I'm trying to protect you."

"I don't need protecting. Not from her."

"Julian, please."

A voice came from the doorway, soft, wounded. "Is everything alright in here?"

Corinne stood there in the doorway, hand pressed to her chest like she'd walked in on something painful to witness. The performance was flawless.

"It's nothing," Julian said quickly, already moving toward her. "Mia's just upset again."

"I understand," Corinne said, and had the nerve to look at me with something like pity. "Grief does strange things to people. I only hope you know I never meant to cause you pain, Mia. I loved your mother very much."

"You stole from her," I said. "While she was dying."

Corinne's eyes glistened, right on cue. "I don't know what I did to make you hate me so much."

Julian awstepped between us, physically, like I was the threat in the room. "Stop it. Just stop. Leave her alone."

"Julian."

"I trust her," he said, and the words landed like a slap. "I trust her more than I trust you right now. So just leave us alone, Mia. Please."

I stood there in the living room I grew up in, staring at my brother's back as he wrapped his arm around the woman who had robbed our mother's grave before it was even filled, and I understood, with a clarity that hollowed me out completely, that no one in this house was going to help me.

Not my father. Not my brother. No one.

If I wanted to fight this, I would have to do it alone, outside these walls, with whatever desperate means I had left. And there was only one place left to turn, one name that kept surfacing in my mind no matter how hard I tried to push it away. A name attached to more danger than I was ready to admit.

I pulled out my phone and, hands shaking, I started typing a message I never thought I'd send.