“Daddy… Mommy’s boyfriend hit me with a baseball bat. He said if I cry, it’ll hurt more…”

—Now we’re talking—.

The way he said it, without raising his voice, without rushing, reminded me of years ago, when I competed and measured every move.

—Marcus… —I began, but I didn’t really know what I was asking for.

Did he want me to stay calm?
To protect Ethan?
To not cross a line I couldn’t undo?

“Relax,” he said, almost in a whisper. “I’m thinking.”

That word, “thinking”, repeated itself in my head as a red light forced me to stop.

Thinking.
When everything inside me was screaming that there was no time for that.

In the background of the call, a male voice spoke, harsh and irritated.

—Who are you? What are you doing here?

Kyle.

I recognized that tone immediately, but now there was something else: a nervous tension, as if I weren’t expecting to meet someone.

Marcus did not respond immediately.

That silence, once again, began to grow between them like a dangerous space.

“I’m here for the child,” Marcus finally said.

Simple. Direct. No frills.

“That’s none of your business,” Kyle replied, louder now. “It’s my house.”

My grip on the steering wheel tightened until my knuckles turned white.

“My house.”

That phrase struck a chord inside me that I had been ignoring for months.

“No,” Marcus said. “It’s not your house.”

A sharp sound, like a blow against a surface, interrupted the air.

Ethan let out a small groan.

—Marcus—I said, my pulse racing—. Get him out of there.

—That’s what I’m doing —he replied—.

But he wasn’t moving.
I could hear him.

It wasn’t moving.

As if something were keeping him in that exact place, at that point where everything could change depending on a single decision.

“Don’t come any closer,” Kyle said, and now his voice had a different edge. “I’m warning you.”

An object hit something, maybe the countertop, maybe the floor.

My breathing became irregular, and for a second I forgot where I was, where I was going.

There was only that one scene that I couldn’t see.

—Marcus— I whispered. Please.

He did not respond immediately.

Instead, he spoke with a calmness that chilled me to the bone.

“The boy is afraid of you,” he said. “That should tell you something.”

Silence.

A thick, uncomfortable silence, full of unspoken things.

“He just fell,” Kyle replied, more quietly. “It was nothing.”

That phrase.

The same one Lena had used days before, when Ethan had a small bruise on his leg.

“He fell.”

The words began to align in my mind, like pieces that could no longer be ignored.

“No,” Marcus said. “That’s not what he said.”

My heart stopped for a second.

Because that was the truth.

And the truth, right now, seemed more dangerous than anything else.

“Kids exaggerate,” Kyle replied, with a short, forced laugh. “You know how they are.”

Marcus didn’t laugh.

He said nothing for a few seconds that felt endless.

Then he spoke, more slowly.

—Yes —he said—. But fear isn’t so easily invented.