Luke had planned for thieves.
He had planned for rivals.
For police.
For the slow bleed of bad luck that followed any household named Gallagher.
He had not planned for Monica.
The Intervention
It started quietly.
Too quietly.
Luke noticed it when the numbers didn't align—not a missing spike, not a system alert, but a feeling. The kind he had learned to trust across worlds.
He opened the secure ledger.
The cold wallet was intact.
The business account untouched.
But the Squirrel Fund—the emergency cash stash Fiona had hidden, saved dollar by dollar for winters, evictions, hospital scares—
Gone.
Every bill.
Every envelope.
Luke felt something crack—not loudly, not cleanly.
Just a pressure behind the eyes.
Monica Gallagher
Monica hadn't kicked the door down.
She never did.
She drifted in like weather—bright, chaotic, smiling with the confidence of someone who believed love excused destruction.
"I needed it," she said later, waving her hands, pacing the living room. "Just for a bit. You know I'll pay it back."
Debbie was crying.
Carl was furious.
Fiona looked hollow.
Frank was nowhere to be found.
Luke stood by the doorway, silent.
The Emotional Regulator engaged automatically—but it couldn't erase context.
This wasn't theft.
It was betrayal disguised as motherhood.
Crumbling
That night, the house felt smaller.
The walls pressed in with old memories: eviction notices, shut-off warnings, nights where hunger was explained away as discipline.
Fiona sat at the table long after everyone else slept.
"I should've hidden it better," she whispered.
Luke sat across from her.
"That fund wasn't meant to survive Monica," he said calmly. "Nothing is."
She looked up, eyes red. "Then what's the point of saving?"
The question wasn't about money.
It was about hope.
Luke's Handling
Luke did not shout.
He did not confront Monica again.
He did not chase the money.
Instead, he opened his laptop.
Three transfers.
Two hours of work.
One quiet recalibration.
The Squirrel Fund was restored.
Not magically.
Not dramatically.
Just… there again.
Luke replenished it from clean revenue, not crypto, not gray funds. He labeled it differently this time.
Emergency Reserve — Tiered Access
Monica would never touch it again.
A Different Lesson
The next morning, Luke spoke to Fiona alone.
"Monica doesn't steal because she's cruel," he said. "She steals because she doesn't believe the future exists."
Fiona swallowed. "So what do we do?"
"We stop building things that assume she'll change," Luke replied gently. "And we stop letting her failure define ours."
He slid the ledger toward her.
The numbers were whole.
Her hands trembled.
Monica Leaves
Monica left two days later.
No apology.
No explanation.
Just a hug that lingered too long and meant nothing.
Luke watched from the porch as she walked down the street, coat too thin, smile too bright.
He felt no anger.
Only clarity.
The Squirrel Fund, Reimagined
That night, Luke wrote new rules into his life:
Emotional chaos required structural solutions
Love did not override accountability
Stability was not sentimental—it was engineered
The fund remained.
But now it wasn't just money.
It was a boundary.
And boundaries, Luke knew, were the only inheritance that ever truly lasted.
As the house settled into uneasy quiet, Luke closed the ledger and turned off the light.
This world didn't need heroes.
It needed people who stayed.