Chapter 6 - Unearthing the Secrets
The execution of the search warrant produced a goldmine of evidence. Detective Thorne and a team of forensic technicians spent eighteen hours inside the Vance estate, tearing apart the polished, sterile house that had been Caroline's prison.
Inside the wall safe behind the bookshelf, they found the secondary hard drive, along with three black leather journals belonging to Luke. When digital forensics cracked the encryption on the drive, what they uncovered shocked even the veteran homicide detectives.
Luke had saved years of video files, meticulously labeled by date. The footage captured his reign of terror in horrifying detail: Luke screaming at Caroline over minor household chores, knocking her down, slapping her, throwing heavy objects at her head, and locking her in the basement for days without food.
Worse still were the journals. In his neat, elegant handwriting, Luke had detailed his twisted obsession. He wrote about his belief that Caroline was "genetically weak," and that her body needed to be "punished and purified" through violent discipline to produce a strong male heir. He had even documented the dates he caused her miscarriages, calculating how many weeks along she was and expressing disgust when the lost infants were confirmed to be male.
When Eleanor Reyes reviewed the files, she called Caroline and Sarah into her office.
"This isn't just abuse," Eleanor said, her voice shaking with righteous anger. "This is systematic, pre-meditated torture. The video from the night he burned you is intact, Caroline. The camera in the kitchen captured everything. It captured him boiling the kettle, standing over you on the floor, and shouting those exact words at you."
Caroline squeezed Sarah’s hand, feeling tears slip down her face—not tears of pain, but of overwhelming relief. The ultimate horror of domestic abuse is being made to feel like you are crazy, like no one will ever believe you. Now, the truth was preserved in unassailable high definition.
"Luke's defense lawyers saw a preview of this evidence during today's discovery hearing," Eleanor added with a cold smile. "Sterling looked like he was going to vomit. They tried to offer an immediate guilty plea in exchange for thirty years."
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"What did you tell them?" Caroline asked.
"I told them to go to hell," Eleanor replied firm. "We are going to trial, Caroline. You deserve full justice, and the world needs to see what kind of monster Luke Vance really is."
