I had pretended to believe her explanation. In reality, my commanding officer had already quietly helped me arrange an early return home and initiate a formal welfare investigation weeks earlier.
I lifted Leo carefully out of his crib and wrapped him snugly in a blanket. Audrey immediately stepped into my path, blocking the doorway.
“Where exactly do you think you’re taking him?” she demanded.
“To save my son’s life.”
Eleanor narrowed her eyes at me. “You need to calm yourself down and hear our side of things first, Lucas.”
I looked past both of them toward the front windows. Headlights swept suddenly across the living room walls.
“I’ve already heard more than enough,” I said.
Six Weeks of Quiet Preparation
Outside, several car doors opened one after another in quick succession. Eleanor’s confident expression flickered for the first time. Audrey glanced sharply toward the driveway, suddenly alert and tense.
Neither one of them had any idea that I had spent the past six weeks quietly gathering bank records, recovering deleted text messages, and pulling footage from the nursery camera they had both genuinely believed was broken and nonfunctional.
Sophia’s own father had also carefully saved several frightened emails she had managed to send out before they confiscated her phone entirely. They had both looked at me for years like I was simply a soldier trained only to follow orders without question.
