Marcus waited. “How old are you, Eli?”
“Ten.”
“She’s almost two,” Eli replied automatically. “She likes yellow things. And bananas.”
Marcus nodded, committing the detail to memory. “Who were you running from tonight?”
Eli didn’t answer. He simply lifted his shirt.
Marcus turned his eyes away almost at once, releasing a slow, measured breath. Even after years on the job, some things still struck like a blow to the chest. The marks along Eli’s ribs weren’t the result of sudden fear or childish mishaps. They told a longer story—one written over time by hands that never should have touched a child.
Across the room, Hannah met Marcus’s gaze and gave the slightest shake of her head. This wasn’t recent.
This was endurance.
“Your parents,” Marcus said gently. “Are they involved?”
Eli shook his head. “Our dad died. Our mom… she sent us to stay with Aunt Carol.”
The name settled heavily in the air.
Because Aunt Carol was known.
Within forty minutes, patrol cars lined the street outside a tidy suburban home less than five miles away. The porch light glowed warmly. A charity banner still hung proudly near the front door. Officers moved in swiftly and carefully, bracing for anger, for confrontation.
What they found instead stopped even the most seasoned among them cold.
Children.
Too many.
Some pressed together in corners. Some frozen by fear more than force. All of them small, silent—and unmistakably relieved when they realized the uniformed adults weren’t there to hurt them.
The captain on scene—a man who had led through riots and disasters—dropped to his knees in the living room when the scale of it became clear. This wasn’t a few kids slipping through cracks. It was an entire hidden operation. A private “care home” sustained by paperwork, deception, and misplaced trust.
