Chapter 1 - Preserving the Evidence
The sirens wailed through the streets of Columbus, but inside the back of the ambulance, the world felt eerie and slow.
Blood poured from the left side of my forehead, dripping off my jaw and soaking into the collar of my light blue dress—the dress I had picked out with such excitement only three days ago. Beside me, Wyatt held my right hand so tightly his knuckles turned white. His left hand hovered over my forehead, holding a sterile gauze pad pressed firmly against my shattered brow, his tears falling silently onto my arm.
“Stay with me, Sadie,” Wyatt choked out, his voice trembling with a mixture of terror and unbridled fury. “Look at me with your good eye. Don’t you dare close it.”
“I’m here,” I whispered. My words sounded thick, slurred by the swelling already closing over my cheekbone. The pain wasn't a sharp sting anymore; it was a deep, rhythmic throb that pulsed in time with my heartbeat, threatening to drag me into darkness.
When the ambulance slammed to a stop outside the emergency entrance of Mount Carmel Hospital, the rear doors flew open. A trauma team was already waiting.
As they wheeled my stretcher into the blinding neon lights of Trauma Bay 1, a sharp-eyed trauma surgeon, Dr. Evelyn Sterling, stepped up to my side. She took one look at my face, checked my dilated pupils, and began barking orders to the nurses.
“Orbital floor blowout suspect, severe laceration across the supraorbital ridge, massive soft-tissue trauma,” Dr. Sterling said quickly. “Get her to CT immediately!”
Before they could push my gurney out of the bay, I reached out with my trembling hand and grabbed Dr. Sterling’s sleeve.
“Doctor... please,” I gasped, straining to hold her gaze with my open right eye.
Dr. Sterling paused, leaning down close to my lips. “Don’t try to speak, sweetie. You’re safe now.”
“No... listen to me,” I begged, every breath sending a wave of agony across my face. “My father hit me with a concrete brick. My mother and sister watched and laughed. They tried to smash my phone so we couldn't call 911. Please... photograph every single injury. Keep my bloody dress in an evidence bag. Collect swab samples from the brick dust on my skin. Do not let them say this was an accident.”
Dr. Sterling froze. Her professional detachment cracked for a fraction of a second, replaced by deep horror. She looked up at Wyatt, who nodded grimly, his face pale as chalk.
“She’s telling the truth, Doctor,” Wyatt said, pulling a ziplock bag from his jacket pocket. Inside was a jagged piece of red brick covered in dark blood and blonde hair that Terry, the electrician who called 911, had kicked off the grass into Wyatt's hands before the police arrived. “This is the weapon. Her father threw it straight into her face from three feet away.”
Dr. Sterling took the bag, her jaw tightening with resolute purpose. She turned to the head nurse.
“Call the forensic nurse examiner immediately,” Dr. Sterling ordered, her voice like steel. “Bag the clothes. Document every scrape, fracture, and bruise. And call the Columbus Police Department’s Special Victims and Violent Crimes Unit. We are preserving a crime scene right here in this room.”
While they rushed me through the CT scanner and stabilized the bleeding around my left eye, Detective Karen Miller arrived in the waiting area.
Detective Miller was a veteran investigator with tired eyes and a no-nonsense demeanor. She stood beside Wyatt as he recounted the events on the porch—how my father, Gregory Davis, had demanded Wyatt dump me and marry my sister, Melanie; how my mother, Brenda, had laughed as my face cracked open; and how they had smashed Wyatt’s phone to prevent help from arriving.
“We have a eyewitness who supports your story, Mr. Campbell,” Detective Miller said, pulling out her notepad. “The utility worker, Terry Vance. He told the 911 dispatcher that he saw Gregory Davis swing a brick into your fiancé's face while Brenda and Melanie Davis stood by encouraging him. That’s one witness.”
“There are more,” Wyatt said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, dark register. “The two paramedics who loaded Sadie into the rig heard my mother say, ‘She got what she deserved.’ That’s three witnesses. Dr. Sterling and the forensic nurse preserved the blood and brick dust—that’s four and five. And the neighbor across the street, Mrs. Higgins, was standing on her porch when it happened.”
“That makes six witnesses,” Detective Miller noted, writing rapidly. “A rock-solid case for aggravated felonious assault and attempted murder.”
I was wheeled back to a private room after two hours of emergency facial suturing. Half my face was wrapped in thick white bandages, and my left eye was completely covered, but my mind was clearer than it had ever been.
When Detective Miller walked into my room to take my statement, I waited until she finished reading her notes before I brought up the detail that had been burning in my mind since the moment the ambulance pulled away from my parents' house.
“Detective,” I rasped through swollen lips.
“Yes, Sadie?”
“When they put me into the ambulance, I looked up at the second-story living room window,” I whispered. “Behind the curtain stood an old man. He looked terrified. He pressed his hand against the glass... like he was trying to warn me.”
Detective Miller frowned, browsing through the public records on her tablet.
“That’s impossible, Sadie,” Detective Miller said gently. “According to state public records, your grandfather, Arthur Davis, was placed into a full-time memory care facility in Cincinnati three years ago after your father assumed power of attorney over his estate.”
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I shook my head slowly, feeling the stitches pull painfully against my skin.
“That was no stranger, Detective,” I swore. “I know my grandfather’s eyes. He is in that house. And whatever my parents are hiding in that locked room is the real reason they tried to destroy me tonight.”
