His truck first, smug on the edge of my driveway like a boot on my throat. Then the jeers at the farmers’ market, my perfect parallel park turned into a sidewalk show. Four clean knife wounds in four brand‑new tires, four hundred and sixty‑two dollars I didn’t have, and still I told myself I’d “handled it.” Until the morning the concrete came. A crane groaned, chains clanked, and a gray slab the size of a coffin settled behind my Chevy with a shudder I felt in my bones. “Civil matter,” he smirked, rehearsing the words the police would use, savoring my trapped car, my trapped life. I cried for ninety seconds—no more, no less—then reached for the phone, ready to dial Stella, or the police, or no one at all. Instead my fingers found an old leather address book, a folded scrap marked in careful cursive: Patricia. The mother he’d bragged would “handle” anyone who crossed him. I dialed, my thumb hovering over the last digit, hearing Paul in my head: You don’t have to do this alo… Continues…