Chapter 2 - The Assessment
They left with only the clothes on their backs. Liam tried to argue, tried to grab his laptop, but the cold, dead look in my eyes—and the very real presence of the sidearm he finally noticed holstered at my hip—sent him scrambling into the rainy Seattle night.
Once the door locked behind them, I sank to the floor, pulling Chloe into my lap.
“It’s okay, baby,” I whispered, kissing the crown of her tangled hair. “Mama’s here. I’m never leaving you with him again. I swear it on my life.”
Chloe finally started to cry. Not the silent, terrified gasps from before, but loud, heart-wrenching sobs. She clung to me, her little fingers twisting into the fabric of my jacket. I carried her upstairs to her bathroom, ran a warm tub, and gently washed the grime and dried tears from her face.
As I helped her out of her dirty pajamas, my stomach dropped. The bruising wasn't just on her arms. There were faint yellow marks on her ribs, indicative of being pushed or grabbed too hard.
“Did Daddy do this?” I asked, my voice trembling with suppressed rage.
Chloe shook her head. “No. Monica. Daddy just… Daddy just watched his phone. He said to stop crying or I’d ruin his meetings.”
He let it happen. That was somehow worse.
I wrapped her in a fluffy towel, put her in her favorite unicorn pajamas, and tucked her into my bed. Once she finally fell asleep, exhausted from the trauma, I walked down to my home office. I booted up my encrypted terminal and made a secure call to my unit commander, Jackson.
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“Sarah? You’re supposed to be on stand-down. Are you okay?”
“Jackson, I need a favor,” I said, staring at the flashing cursor on the screen. “I need a full, deep-dive background check on a civilian. Monica Vance. And I want everything you have on Liam Sterling’s offshore financial activities for the last two years. I’m going to burn his world to the ground.”
