On Easter Sunday, my daughter called me sobbing, “Dad, please come get me.” My son-in-law laughed as his mother shoved me off the porch—“Go back to your lonely house.” I pushed inside… and found my daughter on the floor, bruised and bleeding while they hunted eggs. They thought I’d walk away—until I quietly made one call that would end everything.

He cried. He sobbed. And with a camera recording his every word, he clearly, meticulously detailed every single horrific blow he and his mother had inflicted upon my daughter. He described the weapon. He described her screams. He described their decision to dump her, bleeding and unconscious, at a bus terminal.

His mother, Eleanor, who was being held on the sofa, let out a long, keening wail of despair, burying her face in the expensive cushions as she realized her son had just sealed their fate.

“And,” I added when he had finished, “I want you to confess that you bribed Chief O’Malley to cover it up.”

“Yes!” Richard sobbed hysterically. “Yes, I paid him! I pay him every month to look the other way! Just please, don’t send those files! Please!”

Ghost looked at me through the camera, raising an eyebrow.

“Recordings secured, Commander,” Ghost said.

I smiled. A cold, hard, and deeply satisfying smile.

“Excellent,” I replied. “Now, send the files anyway.”

6. The Easter of Life

Three months later.

The sterile, antiseptic scent of the hospital had been replaced by the warm, earthy smell of spring rain and blooming roses.