The moment my father pulled back the blanket from my pregnant body, every lie my husband and mother-in-law had spread for months fell apart. They had convinced everyone that pregnancy had made me weak, unstable, and emotional. But they never expected him to see the hidden bruises they forced me to cover. And they certainly never expected to learn that the man standing in front of them was not just my father. He was a colonel in the United States Army.

The drive to Rockford was spent in agonizing tension. The sky turned a dark, bruised slate grey as rain began to pelt the windshield of the police SUV. Two marked squad cars followed us at a distance, their emergency lights off to avoid drawing attention.

The property was located down a narrow, unpaved gravel road bordered by dense pine trees. As we pulled up to the overgrown driveway, the farmhouse appeared through the mist. It looked abandoned—peeling white paint, boarded-up ground-floor windows, and a sagging front porch covered in dead vines.

"Team one, take the rear," Reyes instructed into her radio. "Team two, breach the front. Suspects may be armed."

"Wait," I called out from the backseat, staring at the second-story window.

"What is it, Anna?" Dad asked, his hand instantly resting on his weapon holster.

"Look at the upper window on the left," I whispered, pointing through the rain-streaked glass. "There’s a curtain. It’s drawn back slightly. And there’s a small, plastic rainbow taped to the glass."

Dad’s eyes tracked my finger. "That’s a child’s decoration."

Reyes didn't wait. She gave the signal, and four tactical officers kicked down the front door with a deafening CRACK.

"Police! Search warrant! Show me your hands!" shouted the officers as they flooded the ground floor.

I sat in the back of the SUV, holding my breath, clutching my seatbelt so tightly my knuckles turned white. Seconds dragged into eternity. The sound of heavy boots echoing through the structure was answered only by the drum of rain on the SUV roof.

Then, through her radio, Reyes’s voice cut through the static: "Reyes to unit. We have a situation on the second floor. Send the medical team up immediately. And... Colonel? You and Anna better come up here."

Dad opened the SUV door, helping me out into the cold rain. He wrapped his wool coat around my shoulders, shielding my belly from the wind, and guided me up the rotting porch steps into the house.

The ground floor smelled of dust, old mold, and damp wood. But as we climbed the creaky wooden stairs to the second floor, the air changed. It smelled faintly of baby powder, lavender soap, and toasted bread.

At the end of the narrow hallway, a door stood wide open. Two officers were standing guard outside, their weapons lowered, their expressions caught somewhere between shock and profound sadness.

Dad and I walked into the room.

Sitting on a small twin mattress in the corner was a woman. She was emaciated, her face pale and sunken, her blonde hair streaked with silver and tied in a loose knot behind her head. She was wrapped in a faded quilt, holding a little girl—a child who looked to be roughly three years old—tightly against her chest. The child had dark, curly hair and big, brown eyes that looked terrifyingly like Mark’s.

Standing beside the bed, holding a heavy iron skillet as if she meant to defend the woman and child with her life, was an elderly woman with short grey hair.

"Stay back!" the elderly woman cried out, her voice trembling with age and fierce defiance. "Don't you dare touch them! Patricia Carter will not take this child!"

I stepped forward, slipping out from under Dad’s coat.

The pale woman on the mattress raised her head. Her hollow eyes locked onto my face, then drifted down to my large, seven-month pregnant belly.