“Ma’am, I’m not here to hurt you. Your daughter told me what happened. I need to know who did this.”
The woman looked between him and Emma, confusion replacing her fear.
“You’re… the boss, right? The boss I work for.”
“Some people claim to work for me,” Rocco said carefully. “But what happened to you wasn’t authorized. It wasn’t business. It was cruelty.”
The woman, Sarah, broke into tears—quiet, exhausted tears rather than relieved ones.
“They said I owed money to their organization,” she said. “My husband had asked them for a loan before he died.”
She shook her head.
“But Marcus borrowed from no one. He worked three jobs just to stay out of debt.”
Rocco felt his jaw tighten.
“Tell me exactly what they said. Every word you remember.”
“The tall man had a scar on his cheek. He said that Marcus signed some papers. He said that the debt passed to me when he died. $15,000 plus interest.”
Sarah wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“When I said I didn’t have it, they started taking things. They said they’d come back every week until I paid.”
“Did they show you any document?”
“Just a piece of paper with Marcus’s signature. But something felt wrong. His handwriting was different.”
He glanced at Emma, who had sat beside her mother, holding her hand.
“They took everything in two trips. Furniture, appliances… even Emma’s toys. They said that if I called the police, they would come back for something of greater value.”
Rocco understood the threat immediately. In this world, when material things ran out, people paid with their lives, their dignity—or their children.
—The man with the scar—Rocco said calmly—. Did he give you his name?
—Vice— Sarah whispered. —He said his name was Vice—
Rocco’s blood ran cold.
