When she entered the contact room, Gavin was already shackled to the heavy steel table — gaunt, his skin grayed by years of artificial light, his frame swimming inside the faded orange jumpsuit.

“My baby girl,” he whispered, his voice cracking as tears flooded his eyes.

Chloe didn’t run. She didn’t dissolve into the hysterics the social worker had braced for. She walked forward with a strange, heavy calm, climbed onto the plastic chair, leaned across the steel table, and wrapped her small arms around his neck.

For a full minute, neither spoke. The only sound in the room was the ragged breathing of a father holding the last piece of his heart left outside the walls.

Then Chloe leaned closer, her lips brushing the collar of his jumpsuit, and whispered a single sentence that no one else — and no security microphone — could catch.

What happened next stunned the guards at the glass.