The tale unfolds further in the next chapter.

-5-

On the morning of January third, the crisp winter air bit sharply against my face as I walked up the stone steps of the 78th Precinct stationhouse in Park Slope. In my briefcase sat the encrypted flash drive containing fourteen days of damning security footage, certified bank statements showing unauthorized wire transfers totaling over forty-eight thousand dollars, pediatrician notes detailing newborn Liam’s mild hypothermia and dehydration, and Maya’s hospital admission records confirming post-operative infection resulting from unsanitary living conditions.

I pushed open the heavy glass doors and walked up to the high wooden front desk, where a seasoned desk sergeant with silver hair and tired eyes looked up from a stack of paperwork.

“Help you out, sir?” the sergeant asked.

“I’d like to file a formal criminal complaint for grand larceny, identity theft, elder neglect, and reckless endangerment of a minor,” I said clearly, placing my briefcase on the counter and unlatching the clasps.

The sergeant raised an eyebrow, sizing me up in a single, practiced glance. “That’s a heavy menu, pal. You got documentation?”

“Every single receipt, bank statement, medical record, and high-definition security video file you could possibly ask for,” I replied, sliding a neatly organized binder across the counter.

It took two hours with a detective named Morales—a sharp, no-nonsense investigator with a silver shield and a permanent scowl—before the wheels of criminal justice officially began to grind. Detective Morales sat at his metal desk, watching a five-minute highlight reel of the apartment security footage on his laptop.

He watched in silence as Eleanor locked the pantry, as Chloe mocked Maya for asking for warm soup, as Mark laughed while drinking expensive scotch over a starving post-operative mother, and as little Liam cried in his unheated bassinet.

When the video ended, Detective Morales slowly closed the laptop lid. He looked up at me, his expression grim and stone-cold.

“I’ve seen plenty of bad family feuds in my twenty years on the force, Mr. Vance,” Morales said, leaning back in his squeaky chair. “Usually, it’s just screaming matches over inheritance or petty insults at Thanksgiving dinner. But this? This isn't a family dispute. This is systemic psychological abuse, financial fraud, and willful neglect of a vulnerable post-operative patient and a newborn infant.”

“They thought they were untouchable because they share my last name,” I said evenly.

“Well, they’re about to find out that the law doesn't care about last names,” Morales replied, pulling a fresh arrest warrant requisition form toward him and picking up his pen. “We’ve got clear financial paper trails for the grand larceny charges, and the video evidence of the infant endangerment is as open-and-shut as it gets. According to my flight logs, your family landed at JFK from Miami about forty-five minutes ago.”

I blinked, feeling a sudden surge of grim satisfaction. “They landed?”

“Yeah. Flight DL-442 out of MIA. TSA flagged their credit cards when they tried to buy train tickets, so they had to borrow cash from an acquaintance to pay for a cab to your apartment building.” Morales smirked, signing his name across the bottom of the warrant application. “Guess where they’re heading right now?”