“Your wife? What about your son? When did your own son stop mattering to you?”
He finally looked at me, and what I saw in his eyes chilled my blood. There was no love. There was no guilt. There was just… nothing. A void I didn’t recognize.
“My son attacked my wife. The evidence is there. Chelsea has the bruises. He has a history of bad behavior at school.”
“What history?” Ethan exploded. “That’s a lie. I’ve never had problems at school.”
“You were suspended last week for fighting with a classmate.”
“Because that classmate was bothering a girl. He was harassing her and I defended her. The principal congratulated me after speaking with the witnesses.”
Rob didn’t answer. He simply turned around and left the office, closing the door with a loud bang.
I stood there, feeling every piece of hope I had of getting my son back crumble.
Spencer put a hand on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Elellanena.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I replied, wiping away a tear that had escaped without permission. “He made his choice. Now I’m going to make mine.”
I took Ethan’s hand.
“Let’s go home.”
We left the precinct into the cold early morning. Chelsea and Rob had already left. On the empty street, under the orange glow of the streetlights, I stopped for a moment. Ethan looked at me.
“What are we going to do, Grandma?”
I looked into his eyes—those eyes that so resembled his mother’s. Good. Noble. Incapable of lying.
“We are going to prove the truth, my boy. And we are going to make her pay for every tear she made you shed. Because Chelsea made a mistake tonight—a mistake that will cost her everything. She messed with my grandson. And no one—absolutely no one—hurts my family without me doing something about it.”
Commander Elellanena Stone was back, and this time there was no retirement that could stop me.
What secret was Chelsea hiding? Why so much hatred toward an innocent boy? The truth was darker than I imagined.
We arrived at my house when the sun was barely beginning to peek out between the buildings. Ethan walked silently beside me, dragging his feet from fatigue and pain. I lived in a modest apartment in Greenwich Village, a third floor without an elevator that I had bought with my life savings. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was mine. Every piece of furniture, every dish, every memory on those walls belonged to me.
I opened the door and turned on the lights. The familiar smell of coffee and cinnamon greeted me. I always left a stick of cinnamon on the stove so the house would smell like home.
“Come sit on the couch,” I said to Ethan. “I’m going to make you something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry, Grandma.”
“I didn’t ask if you were hungry. I said I’m going to make you something.”
He managed a weak smile and collapsed onto the brown fabric sofa. It was old, but comfortable. I had bought it at a secondhand market fifteen years ago, and it still held up.
I went to the kitchen and heated milk. I prepared two cups of hot chocolate, the way my mother taught me when I was a girl. I cut a piece of the chocolate chip cake I had bought the day before at the local bakery two blocks away.
I returned to the living room with everything on a tray. Ethan took the cup in his hands and sipped. He closed his eyes, savoring it. For a moment, he seemed to forget everything that had happened.
“Thank you, Grandma.”
“Eat slowly. Then I’ll give you something for the pain in your eyebrow.”
I sat beside him and drank my chocolate in silence. Outside, the city was beginning to wake up. You could hear the first trucks, the whistle of the man selling bagels on the corner, the barking of the neighbor’s dog on the second floor.
“Grandma,” Ethan said after a while, “can I stay with you?”
“Of course. For as long as you need.”
“No, I mean… forever. I don’t want to go back to that house. Not with her there.”
I placed my cup on the coffee table and looked at him.
“Ethan, legally your father has custody. I can only have you temporarily until the case is resolved. If you want to stay with me permanently, we’ll have to do things properly—with lawyers, with judges.”
“But my dad will never agree.”
“We don’t know until we try.”
He shook his head.
“He does everything Chelsea tells him. Since they got married, it’s like my dad is a different person. Do you know what I heard a week ago?”
“What did you hear?”
Ethan lowered his voice as if someone could hear us.
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