Part 8
The following morning, the atmosphere in the house was thick with an uneasy, hyper-vigilant tension. A local glass company had repaired Alice's bedroom window, reinforcing it with shatterproof security film, but the psychological damage had already been done. Alice refused to leave my side, her small hands constantly twisting the hem of my shirt, her previous progress toward healing completely erased by the terrifying event of the night before. The police had been called, of course, but the perpetrator had vanished into the shadows of the wooded area behind the property, leaving no physical evidence behind except for the anonymous, menacing note.
Leaving Alice under the strict, watchful protection of Elena and two off-duty officers Simon had hired using our cash reserves, Simon and I drove to a quiet, secluded park on the edge of the city. We needed a place where we could talk without the risk of being overheard or followed by Frederick’s private investigators.
Simon opened his laptop on the hood of the car, his fingers flying across the keyboard as he initiated an encrypted video call to the number he had uncovered the day before. The screen blinked twice before an image finally stabilized, revealing a woman in her late late-fifties sitting in a sunlit kitchen in Florida. Her name was Maria Vance, and her face was lined with the deep, permanent marks of past sorrow.
"Hello, Maria," Simon said gently, ensuring his official badge was visible to the camera. "My name is Simon, and this is my brother, David. Thank you for agreeing to take this call."
The woman stared at the screen for a long moment, her eyes shifting between the two of us before settling on me. "I told the man who called me yesterday that I don't want any trouble," she said, her voice carrying a thick, nervous accent. "I signed papers twenty-five years ago. I am not supposed to speak about that family. Ever."
"Maria, please," I stepped forward closer to the microphone, my voice cracking with an intense, desperate emotion. "I am not here to cause trouble for you, and I don't care about the money you received. I am a father. Last night, someone threw a brick through my eight-year-old daughter's bedroom window. Her grandfather, Frederick, has been physically abusing her for months, leaving terrible bruises on her back, and my wife is helping him cover it up. I need to know what he did to you. I need to know how to stop him before he destroys my little girl's life permanently."
At the mention of the bruises and the little girl, Maria’s expression softened, replaced by a sudden, profound look of horror. She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking as a decades-old dam of suppressed trauma finally broke.
"He is a demon," she whispered, wiping a tear from her cheek. "A demon who thinks he is a god because of that black robe he wore. Twenty-five years ago, I was a young immigrant, working as their live-in housekeeper. One evening, Frederick came home furious because a high-profile case hadn't gone his way in court. He took his anger out on me. He grabbed me by the arms, threw me against the wall, and beat me with his heavy wooden cane until I couldn't stand up. He told me that if I ever told a single soul, he would have me arrested for theft and deported, and I would never see my own children again."
"But you filed a report," Simon noted gently.
"Yes, because the hospital doctor saw the injuries and called a sympathetic detective," Maria nodded, her hands trembling. "But within forty-eight hours, Frederick’s lawyers arrived at my tiny apartment. They didn't just offer me money; they showed me photographs of my children walking to school. They told me that if I signed the non-disclosure agreement and withdrew the complaint, I would receive enough money to buy a house in Florida. If I refused, they whispered that accidents happen to young children on their way to school every single day. I was terrified, so I took the money and I ran as far away as I could."
"Do you still have any copies of the original hospital records or the unsigned statement you gave to the detective?" Simon asked, his eyes gleaming with a sudden, professional hope.
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Maria hesitated, looking off-camera for a long, agonizing moment before she finally reached down and lifted a faded, dusty cardboard box onto the kitchen table. "I kept everything," she said quietly. "I knew that one day, a man like him would do it again. I kept the original medical photos the doctor secretly gave me, and the certified copy of the initial police report before Frederick’s friends wiped it from the official station database. I will email them to you right now. Use them to put that monster in a cage where he belongs."
Five minutes later, Simon’s inbox chimed. We opened the attached files, and my breath caught in my throat. The black-and-white photographs showed horrific, linear bruises across Maria’s back and shoulders—bruises that bore an identical, unmistakable pattern to the marks I had seen on my own daughter's skin just days prior. It was the same signature of violence, the same monstrous behavior, hidden behind twenty-five years of enforced silence. We finally had the ammunition we needed to shatter Frederick's untouchable illusion, but we had to act quickly before the fourteen-day protection order slid through our fingers.
