“What did it say, Officer?” My voice cracked, raw and barely audible over the hammering of my own pulse.

Daniels exhaled slowly into the receiver. “Ms. Carter, I need you to understand that this is an active crime scene. But given that your name is written in what appears to be red spray paint across the living room wall, we need you here immediately. It reads: ‘Olivia’s turns. She promised.’”

My breath caught in my throat. She promised? I had promised nothing. Less than twelve hours ago, I had walked out of Sunday dinner after refusing to be Ryan and Madison’s perpetual, unpaid servant. I had drawn a boundary for the first time in thirty-one years.

“I’m coming right now,” I stammered, pulling on a pair of jeans with trembling hands.

Twenty minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of the Brookhaven Police Department. The early morning sky was an eerie, bruised purple. As I walked through the double glass doors, a tall officer with graying hair at his temples stepped forward. His badge read Daniels.

“Ms. Carter?”

“Yes. Where are my nieces and nephews? Are they okay?” My voice was frantic. Despite my anger at Ryan and Madison, those four children—Leo (8), Maya (6), and the three-year-old twins, Toby and Chloe—were innocent.

“They’re currently with Child Protective Services in a holding room here at the station,” Officer Daniels said, motioning for me to follow him down a fluorescent-lit hallway into an interrogation room. “They’re physically fine, though terrified. The neighbor across the street called 911 at 6:15 a.m. after noticing the front door standing wide open and hearing the twins wailing near the driveway.”

I collapsed into a cold metal chair. “Where are Ryan and Madison? Have you tried calling them?”

“Both of their phones go straight to voicemail,” Daniels replied, sitting across from me and opening a manila folder. “We pinged the towers. Ryan’s phone was last active at 3:00 a.m. near the interstate highway. Madison’s phone was turned off at midnight. But here’s where things get complicated, Ms. Carter.”

He slid a sheet of paper across the table. It was a copy of a legal document—a temporary guardianship release form, signed with what looked like my exact signature, granting me full legal custody of all four children, effective immediately. Attached to it was a copy of my social security card and driver’s license.

My eyes went wide. “This... this isn't my signature! I never signed this! How did they even get copies of my private documents?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Daniels said, leaning in. “Because when our team did a preliminary sweep of your brother’s house, we didn’t just find paint on the wall. We found packing boxes. Tons of them. The master bedroom was stripped completely clean. Clothing, jewelry, passports—all gone. This wasn't a sudden kidnapping, Ms. Carter. Your brother and his wife packed up their entire lives and abandoned four children under the age of eight in the middle of the night.”

A cold sweat broke out across my forehead. My mind raced back to Sunday dinner. The proud announcement of the fifth pregnancy. My parents’ ecstatic reactions. Madison’s cruel comment about me having ‘no family.’

It was all a setup.

Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my pocket. A text message from an unknown number. I pulled it out, my fingers shaking.

The text contained a single high-resolution image: a photo of me taken through the window of the interrogation room right now.