Just heard.

PART 8

We talked for nearly three hours.

Some of the story was painful because it wasn’t a clean tale of villains and victims.

Camilla described people who had tried to help but were afraid for their jobs, administrators who hid behind procedures, and a legal system that had taken years to navigate.

She told me her mother had died before Chloe was born and that her father had stopped answering calls after Victor threatened to end a contract that kept his small business alive.

She had never truly been alone, but she’d often felt like it.