And so when the authorities granted me sole temporary custody, when one official body finally, correctly, placed my daughter behind me and the danger in front of me, I felt the first loosening of that terror.

The system had failed her for two days.

Now, at last, it was working.

And I intended to make sure it never stopped working for her again.

Chapter 9 — The Bank

George retaliated the way cornered people do, by attacking.

He filed an emergency legal claim against me, asserting that I was using my military position and contacts to alienate him from his child.

And he claimed the house was marital property, on the grounds that he had supposedly invested ten years of improvements into it.