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What happened next confused me for years because Dad didn't hit me or shout at me. Instead, he crouched down and pulled me into his arms.

“It's okay.”

I clung to him because Mom was dead and I was seven years old, and no matter how frightened I sometimes was of my dad, there was nobody else left.

“I told them you tripped,” he murmured, stroking my hair while I sobbed against his chest. “Nobody needs to know what really happened.”

“I tripped?” I clutched that with both hands.

“I know.”

“I didn't push her.”

“I know you didn't mean to.”

That wasn't what I'd said, but I was seven and frightened and drowning in guilt, and I didn't understand the difference.

Not then.

Dad made sure I did eventually.

He started drinking after Mom died. At first, I thought it was because he missed her, and that became another thing I blamed myself for. I'd taken Mom away from him, so of course he drank. Of course he was angry. Of course sometimes there wasn't any food in the apartment because Dad had spent the money on alcohol.

I hadn’t realized he’d taken her death as permission to do what he liked.

By the time I was old enough to work, I got a job after school. It wasn't much, just a few hours wherever someone would take me, but it meant I could buy groceries and pay for the things I needed for school.

Later I worked weekends as well.

Dad told people I was a good kid helping out after the tragedy, and I thought that was what I was doing too.

I owed him.

I owed Mom.

For years, Dad didn't ask me for anything beyond that. He didn't need to because everything I earned went toward keeping us fed and the lights on anyway.

Then I got drafted.

Suddenly my name was in the papers and people knew who I was. There were articles about the promising young player who'd overcome tragedy after losing his mother as a child, and every single one made me feel sick because nobody knew the truth.

Dad did.

The first demand came before I'd even played my first professional game.

He sent me a still from the security footage, the image showing my hands against Mom's back, and underneath it he'd written one sentence.

Imagine what the press would do with the whole video.

I paid him.

Of course I paid him.

At first the amounts weren't huge, but once I started earning real money, they grew every year. Every new contract meant Dad wanted more, and whenever I argued, he'd remind me how quickly a video could spread online.

He didn't even have to lie, and that was the worst part.

Anyone watching it would see exactly what I’d seen all those years ago: me coming up behind my mother, my hands hitting her back, and my mother falling down a flight of stone stairs and dying from her injuries.