"You want to play games with me?" he says, loud enough that his voice carries through the window. "Fine. We'll play games. But first, you're going to tell me exactly where you hid my keys, and then you're going to apologize for making me look like an idiot."
Delilah raises her head slightly, and I can see her gathering what's left of her courage. "Dad, I really didn't—"
The sound of his hand hitting her face cracks through the night air like a gunshot.
My vision goes red at the edges, and for a moment I can't breathe. Can't think. Can't do anything but watch as she staggers back a step, one hand pressed to her cheek, her careful composure finally cracking into something raw and desperate.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, the words automatic and heartbreaking. "I'm sorry, Dad. I don't know where your keys are, but I'm sorry."
She's apologizing. She's standing there with a handprint blooming across her face, and she's fucking apologizing to the man who put it there.
Just like I used to do.
"Now," Jenkins says, his voice taking on a mock-reasonable tone that's somehow worse than the shouting, "you're going to help me find those keys. And you're going to keep looking until we find them."
He doesn't believe his own story anymore—if he ever did. This isn't about keys. This is about power, about having someone to hurt, about feeding whatever black thing lives inside him that needs to see fear in other people's eyes.
"Start with the kitchen," he orders, gesturing toward the back of the house. "Check every drawer, every cabinet. Maybe you hid them somewhere you forgot about."
Delilah moves like she's underwater, each step careful and measured. The red mark on her cheek is already darkening, a handprint that will be purple by morning. She knows this is pointless—she knows exactly where the keys are, because she knows she didn't take them—but she plays along because the alternative is worse.
I watch through the window as she opens cabinet doors with methodical precision, checking behind dishes and boxes of cereal, moving cans and containers with the kind of thoroughness that comes from years of learning that half-measures bring punishment. Jenkins follows her around the small kitchen like a circling shark, close enough that she has to squeeze past him to reach the higher shelves.
"Your mother used to do this same shit," he says conversationally, taking another pull from his flask. "Hide things from me, move stuff around, make me think I was going crazy. Lying bitch thought she was so clever."
Delilah's hands still for just a moment on a cabinet handle, but she doesn't respond. Smart girl. She's learned that engaging with his delusions only feeds them.
"Look where it got her," Jenkins continues, and there's something in his voice now that makes my skin crawl. Not grief—satisfaction. "All that running around, all that sneaking. Didn't help her much when she wrapped her car around that tree, did it?"
The words hit me like ice water. Car accident, my ass. The way he says it, the timing—Delilah was nine when her mother died, old enough to remember, young enough to be shaped by the loss. Old enough to understand what questions not to ask.
"Dad, please," Delilah whispers, her voice barely audible through the glass. "I'm looking. I'm checking everywhere."
"Check harder." Jenkins moves closer, crowding her against the counter. "Because I'm getting tired of this game, and you know what happens when I get tired."
She nods quickly and moves to the next cabinet, but her movements are getting shakier, less controlled. The fear is bleeding through her careful composure, and Jenkins can smell it like blood in the water.
"Nothing here either," she says after checking the last drawer, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. "Maybe they're in the living room? Or upstairs?"
"Maybe you're just not looking hard enough."
The words are barely out of his mouth before he grabs her by the shoulders and slams her backward into the cabinet. The impact sends dishes rattling inside, and Delilah's head snaps back against the wood with a sound that makes my vision go white at the edges.
"I'm sorry!" The words tumble out of her automatically, a conditioned response to violence. "I'm sorry, Dad. I don't know where they could be. I really don't."
My hands are shaking now, fingers digging into the fence post hard enough to drive splinters under my nails. The rational part of my mind—the part that usually controls everything—is drowning under a flood of memory and rage.
Nine years old and backed against the kitchen wall, while he explains why I made him angry. Twelve and apologizing for existing, for breathing too loud, for not being invisible enough. Fifteen and finally big enough to fight back, finally understanding that some people only understand violence.
But who the fuck do you call when the violence is coming from a cop? When the person wearing a badge is the monster under the bed? Jenkins's fellow officers protect him, cover for him, make complaints disappear into filing cabinets that never see daylight. Internal Affairs investigators who golf with the accused. District attorneys who need police cooperation to win cases.
The system isn't broken—it's working exactly as designed. To protect the people with power from the people without it.
"Upstairs," Jenkins says, pointing toward the staircase with his flask. "Check every room. And if you don't find them, we're going to have a serious discussion about honesty."
Delilah edges past him toward the stairs, moving like someone trying not to attract a predator's attention. But Jenkins follows close behind, his boots heavy on the wooden steps, each footfall a promise of worse things coming.
"You know what your problem is?" he says as they climb. "You think you're better than me. Going to college, reading your fancy books, acting like you're too good for this family."
