Joyce Knightly February 21st,20XX

“Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t make it tonight. I already put the kids to sleep so take your time and get here when you can, okay? I ended up showing them my abilities, so I think they’ll be too tired to run away.”

Aaron’s calm voice filtered through the phone as he reassured me that the twins were both okay and weren’t planning to run away. I worried about what events had caused him to reveal his powers to the twins but decided not to think about it. Right now my priorities were the two children in the hospital room beside us and the two criminals in front of me.

“Okay, I’ll try to be there by midday. Love you!”

He paused, and the sound of clothes ruffling filtered through the phone speaker before he quietly whispered a response.

“Yeah, love you too.”

He’d always found saying it embarrassing, but I couldn’t imagine why. It wasn’t like he didn’t say it all the time to his parents, and his parents were very vocal about their emotions as well, so he was really the black sheep in the family.

I hung up the call and walked back into the room and took my seat in the middle of the room. Archer was currently in a hospital bed in another room and his younger sister had refused to take even a step away from his side. Right now, I had Annora watching over her, but I didn’t doubt she was currently on her phone.

Again, it was probably time to hire a secondary secretary that actually cared about their job.

Archer’s guidance counsellor, an old man that struggled to stay awake at an hour past midnight, clung to a coffee cup and tried his best to stay awake. He’d already made his testimony to the police and the caseworker about his suspicions of abuse in the Warrick household and the steps he’d taken to help the children.

I also made my testimony on having received the plea for help in the application and my steps in trying to aid the children. Thankfully, I had a history of donating to children in need and charities that worked towards keeping kids off the streets so my actions weren’t too suspicious.

The two criminals in front of me looked like shells of the violent creatures they’d been earlier.

I didn’t feel any sort of sympathy for them, but I wondered if they weren’t hurt. My investigation hadn’t been able to pin down Archer’s powers, but a look into the people around the family told me it had something to do with the mind. I doubted it was mind control, but it seemed dangerous.

The cops finished getting statements from the couple and prepared to fine them for child abuse. At most, they would get a few months in jail, but that was only if Archer testified to all the abuse he’d gone through. Most children in this situation were either too intimidated to testify or were reluctant to harm the only adults in their lives. I didn’t want to put the children anywhere near the two cartons of toxic waste in the future, so I resigned myself to settling for a petty fine and prepared for my Plan B.

I could do more if I was a registered foster parent who planned to take them in, but sadly I wasn’t… but I knew someone that was. As they read the criminals their rights and offered the chance to call a lawyer, I stepped out once again to make another call.

It rung for a few seconds too long and made me debate hanging up, but I pushed myself to stay on the line.

“Joyce? How rare of you to call.”

A dry and groggy voice filtered through the speaker and filled me with an emotion I wasn’t ready to label yet.

“Father.”

“As one would call the person who sired them; what do you want at three in the morning? I already told you to go wild with Kingdom’s resources. It’ll all be yours soon.”

I fought back the urge to argue with him over this same topic once again and tried to humble myself. Now wasn’t the time to argue.

“Fath-Dad. Are you still registered as a foster parent?”

The sound of ruffling sheets filtered through the unnecessarily high-tech speakers, and I heard him rustling for his glasses on his bedstand.

“A foster parent? What, did Cherry mess up so badly that you want to replace her?”

“I wouldn’t do that dad. The situation is a bit difficult to explain, but in short, I have two kids Squire needs, but their guardians are resisting. I have a chance to foster them, but the window will close soon.”

It was such a messy explanation, and my hyper-awareness of time ticking past only made it messier. I held my breath as I waited for my father to deny my request so I could try to convince him, but my father suddenly agreed without as much as a why.

“Oh! It’s too early for me to think straight. You need me to act as a foster parent so you can steal a few children? Well, I can afford to raise a few extra mouths. Call my assistant over to where you are. He has all the documents on him…. Your mother misses you.”

Although he hadn’t said it outright, I knew that was the price I needed to pay for the favour.

“Tell her I’ll come over if Cherry can come as well. Good night dad…Love you.”

I hung up the call before I could respond and dialled my father’s secretary to come over. Now, I needed to handle things on my own.

The police had left by now and a court administered lawyer sat with the clients. She didn’t look pleased to be representing them, but that only made my job easier.

“Mr. Warrick, I’m sure you’re aware of how much time and money you’re under the knife for. You recently just bought a house as well, that couldn’t have been cheap.”

The couple looked at me with similarly irritating faces but contrasting expressions. The woman sobbed so hard that her mascara had turned her face into a bizarre art piece, but the man looked incensed like he wanted to rip the entire room apart with his bare hands.

He finally turned to me and looked at me with an expression that made me want to punch him in the face.

“Let's cut to the chase, shall we? You’re the lady that sent all of those annoying people to our door to take the little monster away from us, aren’t you?”

I didn’t grace his petty insult at a child with a response and slammed down the contract I’d brought with me.

“The first is an agreement for you to stay away from the kids, and the second is a contract for you to release all legal responsibility and ownership of the children. If you sign this, I’ll give you enough to pay off the fine and to move out of the country.”

He spent a few seconds looking at the documents on the table and greed showed itself on his face, but just as quickly as it reared its head did it die out and become replaced by a crooked smile. He aimed his bloodshot eyes at mine and the restraints tightened around his chest as he leaned forward.

His voice, hoarse and dry, slithered into my ears.

“Ha! What did you call it, a scholarship program? I don’t buy it. What, are you into the kid or something?”

He must have read the absolute repulsion on my face because he kept digging into his ridiculous theory.

“Hey, Crazy rich lady, it looks like it's only a crime as long as you’re poor, right? Why else would you be so insistent on becoming that kid’s guardian? Ha! you can pretend to care about him all you want but don’t pretend you’re any better than I am.”

There was a special place in hell I currently sat in. It was a place where I got the rare experience of being compared to a piece of scum like the criminal in front of me and came out the worse for it.

I struggled to control my anger and tapped the pieces of paper on the table. The sooner they signed, the sooner I could get out of here.

“Sign, or I’ll make sure both you and your girlfriend spend the next forty years behind bars.”

He was too far gone to be reasonable, and I felt more and more disgusted by every second I had to spend around him. I switched my target to his girlfriend, who looked more and more terrified with every word he said. It was obvious by the many times she kicked him under the table and the way she tried to smile at me and the cops earlier that she wasn’t particularly attached to the man she’d married.

If I offered her enough, I knew that she would sign his life away. And since they were married, she had the right to make decisions for him once he was judged incapable of doing so on his own.

“Well, Mr. Warrick, you had choices and you’ve made them. I just hope you won’t come to regret it.”

Honestly, I was quite glad that he had behaved the way he had, because of what I could do next. I buzzed the police into the room and took several steps back towards the door.

“You can take him away but leave the woman. I have cause to believe that she was a fellow victim.”

Her heavily made-up eyes lit up at my statement and she shrank into herself to seem more docile but the man, having realized what I planned to do, roared and fought his restraints. He wasn’t all that scary anymore and just looked pathetic, like a rabid beast. He was too far gone to recognize how much his behaviour harmed his case.

“Takedown notes for suspected possession of drugs as well, run some tests... Kingdom will pay, of course, I want him locked up for as long as possible. Do it properly.”

The heavy doors swung open and a man I hadn’t seen for almost five years burst through the doors with a sickeningly warm expression. I’d used to crave that smile and the rare shows of affection he would dole out, but now it did nothing more than sicken me.

“Wow, Ms. Joyce! It seems like you’ve grown more and more to resemble your father in these years I haven’t seen you!”

I dodged as he leaned in for a hug and grabbed at the files he held in his left hand. These were the only reason I had to see his annoying face again.

The room had become scarily quiet as they had dragged the criminal out to perform one of many drug tests. The woman was also a criminal, as she’d been a willing bystander to the abuse that occurred in that household, but I didn’t have any intentions of putting her away.

Scum like her was easy enough to deal with and wasn’t worth wasting Kingdom’s influence.

I walked over to her and sat opposite her, placing the documents on the table between her and myself again.

“Mrs. Warrick. You’ve seen what I can do, and you heard my previous proposal. What is your answer?”

While I had been expecting her to sign immediately, she actually read them over and tried to collect herself. She raised her cuffed hands to fix up her hair and took a tissue from the table to wipe down her face.

“Put on an extra ten thousand and you’ll never hear of me again, but not a cent less. I don’t know why you want those creepy kids so much, but they were our source of income! You can’t take ‘em and not give me any remuneration!”

I felt my blood pressure raise so high that I temporarily saw red. Of course, that was what it all boiled down to.

Money.

I wasn’t as noble as to believe that money was valueless, but compared to the children’s lives that she prepared to sign away…

Disgusting.

“Since you want to negotiate, how about you take one year of jail time and I’ll give you enough money once you’re out to get back on the streets and find another family to leech off of?”

Her eyes widened as she watched me retreat the documents on the table and she threw her entire body at my arm. Her stomach crashed against the table and her palms ignored the cuffs on her wrists and laid flat on the table.

“WAIT! Don’t be like that~”

She wheedled and desperately blinked her eyes at me to seem harmless and pitiful.

“I’ll sign, I’ll sign! Bring in the caseworker and the lawyers! You need ‘em to make this official, right?”

The caseworker came into the room shortly after and she signed away the children she was supposed to be responsible for.

Although I wished I never had to see her again, she had the nerve to stop the police officer that dragged her away to a holding cell and ask to speak to me. The officer looked at me for permission and slightly loosened her hold on the criminal.

“Two minutes.”

The officer took a few steps aside to give us space to speak, but the criminal still felt the need to lean in close to me and whisper.

“Look, Ms. rich lady. I don’t know what you want to do with those kids, and I don’t really care neitha’ but you watch out for yourself. You look like a real amiable lady and all that, but those kids ain’t right.”

She trailed off with a stuck-up expression that showed she knew something I didn’t. Or so she thought.

“Remember that you already got…whaddya call it, legal guardianship? Yeah. It’s yours now, so don’t come looking for me when you regret it, y’hear? Don’t come chasing down ya money either!”

The officer put up a single finger to show we had a minute left and shifted in her spot. She was about to turn around and walk back towards us, but I wasn’t in the mood to whisper.

“Don’t worry about those children, Mrs. Warrick. All you need to worry about is clearing out of town before the week is up. You won’t get the money until you send my secretary the receipts for your travel expenses and proof of your relocation. As per the contract, I’ll send you five thousand a month for the next year and three hundred for every subsequent month after that. If I hear you came into the city or a hundred miles near those children, not only will I immediately cease the payments, but I’ll make sure you come back to serve the jail time, I think you should. Understood?”

Although I asked for her confirmation, I didn’t wait around for it. A trash bag like that, as awful as she had been to those children, wouldn’t dare go up against me.