My head snapped up. "What did you just say?"
Marta tossed the pen onto the desk in front of me. "Dad, sign."
I didn't move. I kept my eyes locked on her. "That thing you just said... what did you mean by that?"
Her gaze shifted for just a second, but she squared her jaw and didn't back down. "If you don't sign, evidence of you assaulting me—years of it—will end up in front of a judge."
She reached into her bag and pulled out a stack of photographs, dropping them on the desk. They fanned out across the surface.
I looked down at them. It felt like someone had thrown a bucket of filth directly in my face: photos of me supposedly hurting her. One showed me reaching out and grabbing her arm from behind, framed by the camera angle to look like an attack. Another showed fake bruises on her skin with a shot of my face looking cold and expressionless just beside it. A few more were screenshots of text messages—all fabricated, all supposedly me threatening her. Every single one was fake.
I stared at these carefully manufactured lies, and something inside me short-circuited. I stood completely still. This was the daughter I had treasured, the child I had held in the palm of my hand for twenty years.
"That's fake." The words tore out of me. My voice broke on the way out. "That's all fabricated!"
Marta let out a short, dismissive laugh. "Does it matter?" She looked at me like I was something beneath her. "Dad, you're a convicted felon, a rapist on record. Tell me, when the judge looks at this, who do you think they'll believe? Me, or you?"
I looked at her face, and then, strangely, I laughed.
I had raised this girl for twenty years. I'd never let her go without, never let her feel one moment of real hardship if I could help it. I'd worked myself to the bone to give her the best schools, the nicest clothes, every good thing I could find. I had never once laid a hand on her, never even raised my voice at her when I could avoid it. And she was standing here using forged photographs to threaten me, trying to put me back behind bars.