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.”

“Detective,” I said, my voice dangerously calm. “My wife is a fighter. She takes kickboxing classes three times a week. If a stranger broke into our home and attacked her, she would have clawed his eyes out. There would be skin under her nails. There would be defensive wounds on her forearms.” I pointed to her smooth arms. “She didn’t fight back. Which means she knew the person. She let them get close. Or she was held down.”

The detective’s eyes flickered toward the window, toward Victor. It was a micro-expression, a tiny split-second of fear. I caught it.

“We are investigating all leads,” Miller said, sweating now. “But the father, Mr. Victor… he has been very helpful. He hired a private security team to watch the house now.”

“I bet he did,” I said.

I walked out of the room. The seven brothers stopped talking as I approached. Victor looked at me with cold, dead eyes.