Chapter 3 - The Expulsion of the Parasites
The mention of the locked drawer sent a visible jolt through Carmen. She scrambled up from the pantry door, her red dress rumpled, her mask of high-society elegance peeling away to reveal something ugly, feral, and desperate.
"You ungrateful little brat!" Carmen hissed at Olivia, pointing a shaking, diamond-ringed finger at the child. "After everything I’ve done for you! Feeding you, putting a roof over your head while your mother sits around feeling sorry for herself!"
"Carmen, shut your mouth," I growled, stepping forward.
She flinched back. She had spent thirty-four years manipulating me with tears, fabricated heart palpitations, and guilt trips about how hard she worked as a single mother in Baltimore. But the man standing before her now wasn't the boy who needed her approval. The man standing before her was a father whose child had been tortured under his own roof.
Out in the dining room, the twenty guests were already rustling. Chairs scraped violently across the hardwood. Handbags were snatched from sideboards. Coat racks were stripped.
"Carmen, dear, I think we should be going..." a woman with a frosted perm and gold chains whispered nervously, eyeing the front door.
"Nobody moves," I roared, stepping out of the kitchen into the center of the living room, holding Olivia securely on my left hip while keeping Jessica tucked behind my right shoulder.
My voice hit the walls with the force of a battering ram. The women froze.
"Zayden, please!" one of Carmen’s prominent church acquaintances stammered, clutching her silk scarf. "We were just invited for dinner! We didn't know anything about... about family squabbles!"
"You didn't know?" I demanded, gesturing toward the kitchen sink where steam was still rising from the running water’s residue, toward the mountain of dirty dishes, toward my trembling wife whose knuckles were raw and bloody. "You sat at my dining room table, drank my wine, ate my food, and watched a five-year-old girl wash your dirty plates on her tiptoes with boiling water. You watched her cry. You ordered my wife to fetch you watermelon and hibiscus water like she was an indentured servant."
"We didn't mean any harm!" another woman protested, her voice shrill with embarrassment. "Carmen said Jessica was learning discipline—"
"You are accomplices to child abuse," I said coldly. "And you are not leaving until the Phoenix Police Department takes every single one of your names, your driver’s licenses, and your statements."
Before anyone could make a dash for the hallway, the building’s elevators chimed down the hall. Heavy, hurried bootsteps pounded against the outside runner rug.
The front door, which I had left ajar, swung open.
Two uniformed Phoenix police officers—one tall, weathered man with graying hair and a younger female officer with a tactical vest—stepped through, hands resting near their duty belts. Behind them came two paramedics carrying bright orange trauma kits.
"Police! Nobody move," the older officer commanded, scanning the crowded room. His eyes swept past the twenty frozen women, locked onto me holding a small child with bandaged, blistered hands, and narrowed. "Who called 911?"
"I did, Officer," I said clearly. "I’m Zayden Ferris. This is my home. That woman in the red dress is my mother, Carmen Ferris. And these are the victims."
The paramedics moved instantly. The female paramedic knelt beside me with an expression of intense professional focus. "Sweetheart, can I see your hands? My name is Sarah. I’m here to make them feel better."
Olivia shrank back into my neck, but I gently kissed her forehead. "It's okay, Livvy. Let Sarah help. She’s a friend."
Slowly, Olivia extended her little arms.
When the paramedic saw the extent of the blistering—the peeling skin, the raw red dermis exposed to harsh dish detergent—she let out a sharp, quiet intake of breath. She looked up at her partner. "Second-degree burns across both hands and wrists. Chemical irritation from industrial soap. We need burn dressings and sterile saline right now."
The female police officer, whose name tag read *Davis*, pulled out a notepad and locked her gaze on Carmen. "Ma'am, step over here away from the family. Now."
"Officer, this is an outrageous misunderstanding!" Carmen cried, her eyes instantly welling with theatrical tears. She clutched her chest, performing the exact routine she had perfected over decades. "I am a sixty-two-year-old widow with a severe heart condition! My son has been traveling, he came home paranoid, and he’s attacking his own mother! I was simply hosting a charity supper for my church group, and my daughter-in-law volunteered to help—"
"She's lying," Jessica spoke up.
Her voice was thin, raspy from dehydration, but it cut through Carmen's performance like a razor. Jessica stepped out from behind me, her eyes hollow, her apron stained with grease and water.
"She took my phone three weeks ago," Jessica said, her jaw shaking. "She told me if I said a word to Zayden, she would tell the court I was mentally unstable and have Olivia taken away. She told me she had friends in Child Protective Services in Baltimore who would back her up. She locked our documents away. She locked the burn cream in her nightstand."
Officer Miller, the older cop, turned to Carmen. The grandfatherly warmth in his eyes completely vanished, replaced by the grim chill of a veteran who had seen too many domestic monsters.
"Where is this locked drawer?" Officer Miller asked.
Olivia pointed her small, bandaged finger toward the master guest suite at the end of the hall. "In Grandma’s bedroom. Behind the big wooden desk. She has the gold key on her necklace."
Carmen’s hand flew to the collar of her red dress, clutching a thin gold chain tucked beneath her neckline.
May you like
Officer Davis stepped in close, her hand resting firmly on the clasp of her handcuffs. "Ma'am, hand over the key. Or we will breach the furniture, and you will be charged with felony obstruction on top of everything else."
***
