I barely slept, but not from panic. I spent the night reading every page of the Sterling ownership file, and the more I read, the calmer I became. The penthouse had been purchased in my name alone, six years ago, with a clause I had insisted on because even then, some quiet instinct had warned me about my family: any transfer of the property required my physical presence at signing, with valid government identification, verified by the title company. My parents had used a years-old medical authorization form, meant only to let them make decisions during my surgery, and passed it off as power of attorney over my assets. It wasn’t. It never had been.

Which meant the sale was not just unfair. It was fraudulent. Whatever document they had waved at the title company, whatever “new owners” now believed they held the keys to my penthouse, the transaction had been executed without the one thing my own paperwork required: me. I made two calls in the morning. The first was to a real estate attorney. The second was to the title company that had processed the sale. When I explained, calmly, that the property owner had been out of the country during the entire transaction and had signed nothing, the woman on the other end went very quiet, and then asked me to please come in immediately.