My Sister Paid My Landlord $500 to Push Me Out Aft…

My name is Suzanne, and I am twenty-eight. I got laid off on a Tuesday in the clean, corporate way, the kind of meeting where they thanked me for my contributions and slid a severance packet across the conference table as if paper could soften the fall. I went home and did the responsible things first.

I checked my bank app, updated my resume, and told myself I would land on my feet. Two days later, my landlord reached out and said he needed to talk. I assumed it was about the apartment, maybe the repairs he had been putting off for months.

Instead, he told me someone had contacted him directly and offered five hundred dollars extra to end my lease early. Not next month, not at the end of the term. Early, fast, and with a deadline that made my stomach drop.

It was not a stranger. It was not a mistake. It was my sister.