I came home from a Delta deployment to find my wife in the ICU. Her face… I couldn’t recognize her. The doctor whispered, “Thirty-one fractures. Blunt force trauma. Repeated strikes.” Then I saw them outside her room—her father and his seven sons—smiling like they’d just won something. The detective said, “It’s a family matter. The police can’t touch them.” I looked at the hammer print on her skull and replied, “Good. Because I’m not the police.” “What happened to them… no court could ever judge.”

Information acquired. I dragged him to my truck and drove him twenty miles out of town to an abandoned grain silo I knew. It was isolated, soundproof, and terrifying at night. I zip-tied him to a support beam.

“You’re leaving me here?” he cried. “I’ll freeze!”

“It’s fifty degrees,” I said. “You’ll be uncomfortable, but you’ll live. Tessa might not. So you sit here and pray she wakes up. Because if she dies, I come back. And I won’t bring water next time.”

I left him screaming into the darkness.

—————–
I returned to the city, but before I could move on the warehouse, my phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number.

I know what you’re doing. I can help. But you need to know the truth about Tessa.

I stared at the screen. Reply: Who is this?

Response: Someone who hates Victor as much as you do. Meet me at the diner on Route 9. Alone.