POV: Evelyn

Grant asked the judge to make my daughter choose between us.

He smiled when he did it.

Not the smile he used for cameras. This one was smaller, meant only for me across the family courtroom, as if six years of marriage had become a private joke whose ending he already knew.

His attorney rose beside him. “Mrs. Quinn has removed the child from her home, exposed her to an armed motorcycle club, and begun an inappropriate relationship with its president while suffering an untreated psychiatric crisis. Officer Quinn requests immediate sole custody.”

Officer Quinn.

The title remained even after his gun and badge had been taken pending investigation. It sat in the room like a uniform hung over an empty chair.

Miriam touched the folder in front of me. Not my hand. She had learned that I needed facts when I was frightened, not soothing.

“Look at me,” she murmured. “Not him.”

I looked at the judge.

Silas sat in the last row, wearing a black suit that did nothing to make him look less dangerous. His broad shoulders filled half the bench. His wolf had been restless since Grant entered, but Silas had not moved toward me. He had asked where I wanted him.

I had said, Where Sophie can see you, but no one can say you are speaking for me.

So that was where he sat.

Grant’s attorney played a video of the Blackwood Reapers surrounding the hospital. The angle cut off the reporters who had blocked the entrance. Another clip showed me climbing onto Silas’s motorcycle. It ended before the camera could capture the police vehicles following the medicine van in the opposite direction.

“Mrs. Quinn voluntarily placed a six-year-old in the care of violent men,” the attorney said.

“Objection,” Miriam said. “The child was in a licensed hospital at that time.”

“Sustained.”

Grant turned one page in the yellow notebook he always carried to court. He used to write grocery totals in a notebook like that, circling anything he believed I should have bought more cheaply.

His attorney produced Nolan Keene’s records next.

Delusion. Paranoia. Maternal instability.

Seventeen appointments I had never attended became a stack thick enough to hide behind.

Miriam did not argue every lie. She placed the electronic audit report beside it: ten entries created after the dates they described, seven altered from Nolan’s administrator account, one referring to Silas before I had ever met him.

“The physician who authored those records is under suspension,” she said. “The child-removal contractor who relied upon them was arrested carrying forged state credentials. Sergeant Mercer, who approved Officer Quinn’s report, has been suspended. Officer Bell, who attempted to plant a weapon during the search of Mr. Blackwood’s property, is in custody.”

Grant’s smile thinned.

The judge removed her glasses. “Mr. Quinn, your petition asks me to disregard all of that because your daughter allegedly told you she wishes to come home.”

“She did,” Grant said. “She misses her father.”

My fingernails pressed crescents into my palm.

The last time Sophie had seen him, she had hidden beneath a hospital blanket and whispered, No Daddy.

Grant’s attorney stood. “The child is available. We ask that the court hear her preference directly.”

Grant finally looked at me.

He expected me to object.

If I refused, he would say I had coached her. If I agreed to let Sophie sit in this room between two tables and point at a parent, he would make her carry the guilt forever.

That was his favorite kind of trap. Two doors, both built by him.

I stood before Miriam could stop me.

“Your Honor, I want Sophie heard.”

Grant’s smile returned.

“But not here,” I continued. “Not in front of either parent. Not with lawyers repeating adult words until she chooses the answer that makes them stop. Please appoint the child advocate already waiting outside. Let the interview happen in chambers. Record it. Let both attorneys submit questions, but don’t make Sophie look at either of us when she answers.”

The judge studied me.

“You understand the child may say she wants her father?”

Every frightened part of me screamed no.

“Yes.” My voice shook once. I let it. “If that is what she truly wants, I need to know. But she should not have to protect my feelings while she says it.”

Grant leaned toward his attorney. The whisper was too low for human ears at my table.

Silas heard it.