My stomach turned.
The video shifted. The door opened. Jacob was asleep, curled around the stuffed fox he pretended he had outgrown. Darren stood in the doorway and laughed under his breath.
Nothing more happened. No one touched him in the video. No violence. But the message was worse.
They had been using my son as bait before Darren broke him.
Josie ran to the bathroom and vomited.
Micah cursed softly.
I watched the clip twice more, not because I wanted to, but because details matter. The timestamp. A reflection in the hallway mirror. Maurice wearing a ring with a skull. Darren holding a beer. A tattooed wrist I did not recognize.
“Enough for police?” Micah asked.
“Enough for warrants if they want them.”
“If.”
There was the problem.
Los Muertos had survived because fear made witnesses forget. Because evidence vanished. Because Maurice knew which palms to grease and which families to threaten. A flash drive could help. It could also get buried.
Liliana arrived at dawn, hair damp, eyes sharp behind glasses.
She watched three videos, then closed the laptop.
“Where did you get this?”
“Darren’s closet.”
“Josie gave consent?”
Josie nodded from the booth, both hands wrapped around cold coffee.
Liliana exhaled. “This is serious. But Nathan, listen to me. If you act outside the law now, you may destroy the case and lose custody ground.”
“I have custody.”
“Temporary custody. Do not give a judge a reason to question your stability.”
That word again. Stability. As if stable men never had to do unstable things.
“What would you do?” I asked.
“I would give copies to police, CPS, and the prosecutor. Multiple channels. Make it impossible to bury.”
Micah nodded. “Smart.”
I looked at Josie. “Anything else in that house?”
Her answer came too late.
“I don’t know.”
“You lived with him.”
“I lived around him,” she said. “There’s a difference. I told myself there was.”
