Chapter 2 - The Fracture
The fluorescent lights of the county hospital highlighted every hollow contour of my parents' faces. Dr. Evans, a man who had treated my childhood scraped knees, looked at me with cold professional fury.
“Severe malnourishment, dehydration, and an untreated orbital blowout fracture,” Dr. Evans said, lowering his clipboard. “Your father’s eye socket was struck with a blunt object at least a week ago. If you hadn't brought him in, the infection would have reached his brain. I have to call the police, Daniel.”
“Give me until morning,” I said.
“This is elder abuse. It’s mandated reporting.”
“I know. But if you send a black-and-white cruiser to that farm right now, Claire will claim they fell, and the men who helped her will scatter. I need the evidence first.”
Evans hesitated, looking through the glass at my mother holding my father’s bruised hand. “Twelve hours, Dan. Then I make the call.”
I stepped into the room. My father was hooked up to an IV, his good eye tracking me as I sat beside the bed.
“How did Seth get involved in this?” I asked gently.
My father looked away in shame. “A month after you deployed, your combat pay stopped hitting the joint account. Claire showed us the bank statements. She said you cut us off. Then Seth showed up. He said you owed him money, and since you weren't paying, he was taking it out of the farm’s equity.”
I hadn't spoken to Seth in five years, not since he stole my father’s retirement savings to fund a failed contracting business.
“I never stopped sending the money, Dad.”
My mother wept quietly into a tissue. “We didn't know how to pay the property taxes. Claire brought a lawyer to the house. Seth said if your father didn't sign the quitclaim deed, the county would auction the farm and we’d be homeless. When your father tried to read the paperwork...”
“Seth hit me,” my father rasped. “With a heavy brass flashlight. Then he held my hand down on the table and forced the pen.”
A cold, mechanical focus settled over my mind. They hadn't just neglected my parents; they had tortured them to steal a multi-generational asset. I opened the security app on my phone and filtered the timeline for the date of my father’s injury.
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I watched the grainy video buffer, expecting to see Seth’s violent outburst. Instead, the footage revealed a third man standing in our kitchen, calmly drinking a cup of coffee while my brother shattered my father’s face.
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