Page 6 of Robbin’ the Rich

Mom rubbed her forehead. “I know what happened to Lila was awful.”

“It wasn’t just Lila.”

“I know.”

“And nobody at Ascension said a damn thing. If any other organization treated vulnerable kids like that, people in this town would never forgive them. But churches get endless second chances because they sing Hillsong and hand out lattes now. Fuck that.”

The room fell quiet for a beat.

Mom finally reached across the table and squeezed my hand gently.

“You have a good heart,” she said softly. “Even when you’re angry.”

Which was deeply unfair because it instantly took some of the wind out of me.

I exhaled slowly and squeezed her hand back. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“No, you're not, but it’s fine. You don’t need to apologize for caring about people.” Dad pointed his fork at me. “But maybe try caring with slightly lower blood pressure.”

“I’m fueled entirely by caffeine and spite at this point. There’s no going back.”

That earned a laugh from both of them; tension easing enough for the conversation to move on. But the name still sat heavy in my chest for the rest of dinner. Ascension Fellowship.

Dinner had mostly recovered by the time Mom disappeared into the kitchen for dessert.

Dad lingered at the table finishing his wine while I stacked plates automatically.

“You still using that custom gaming PC setup?” he asked casually.

I narrowed my eyes immediately. “Why?”

He sighed dramatically. “My laptop is doing something weird.”

“There it is.”

“It keeps opening twelve tabs every time I click on Excel.”

“What did you do?”

“I think I downloaded something.”

“You absolutely downloaded something.”

He pointed toward his office down the hall. “Can you look at it?”

My father asking me to “look at something” computer related was a long-standing family tradition. Mostly because somewhere around age thirteen, I’d accidentally taught myself how to bypass school firewalls out of boredom, and things had escalated significantly from there.

My parents thought I was ‘good with computers.’ Which was technically true in the same way calling a shark ‘good at swimming’ was technically true.

I carried the dishes into the kitchen, kissed my mother on the cheek while she pulled brownies out of the oven, then headed toward Dad’s office. I dropped into his desk chair and woke the laptop with a tap. On his desk sat a picture of me sleeping on his chest as a baby, next to one of him and my mother on their wedding day. He always was a bit of a softy when it came to me and my mother.

Within thirty seconds I found the culprit.

“Dad.”

“What?”

“You clicked on a fake PDF.”