Chapter 5: The Reaction
The restraining order was served the next morning.
Priscilla’s response was immediate and theatrical. She called the hospital repeatedly, claiming she was being “kept from her family in their time of need.” Derek left a voicemail that started with concern and ended with a thinly veiled warning about “making this worse than it has to be.”
I saved every message.
When they realized the hospital would not put their calls through, they tried a different route. A lawyer representing them contacted the station and requested copies of the original incident report, clearly hoping to get ahead of the narrative. The request was noted and delayed pending the ongoing investigation.
I visited my father after the morning medical rounds. The bruises looked worse in daylight, but his eyes were clearer.
“They’re going to fight this,” he said.
“I know.”
“They’ll say I exaggerated. That I fell. That I’m confused.”
I met his gaze.
“Then they’ll have to explain the bat, the hospital records, the financial transfers, and the fact that their story already changed once under oath. Let them try.”
He studied me for a long moment.
“You always were the tough one.”
“I learned from you,” I said. “You just never used it on your own family before.”
Outside the hospital window the city moved through an ordinary morning. Inside the room, the balance of power had already shifted. Priscilla and Derek had staged their scene carefully.
They simply hadn’t planned for the possibility that the daughter they dismissed as too busy with federal cases might turn every tool she had ever used against strangers onto them.
I sat back in the chair and opened my laptop.
May you like
There was still a great deal of work to do.
But for the first time since my father’s late-night call, I felt the cold, familiar focus of a case that was finally moving in the right direction.
