Chapter 2: The Truth Comes Out
Chapter 2: The Truth Comes Out
Police officers arrived within minutes.
Paramedics wrapped Leo in blankets and immediately began checking him for dehydration and hypothermia.
One officer carefully photographed the kennel, the broken padlock, and the dirt-covered blanket lying inside.
Another officer asked Leo gentle questions while I remained beside him.
At first he hesitated.
Then he quietly told them everything.
This wasn't the first time.
Vanessa had locked him outside several times over the past six months.
Sometimes it was the kennel.
Sometimes it was the basement.
Sometimes she refused to feed him dinner.
She called him names.
She told him his mother would be ashamed of him.
She warned him that if he ever told me, I'd send him away because I loved her more.
Every word felt like another knife twisting inside my chest.
One of Vanessa's guests suddenly began crying.
"I thought she was joking," the woman whispered to the officers.
"She told us she used unusual discipline methods. We... we never imagined..."
Another guest admitted she had seen Leo eating alone in the laundry room during previous parties.
A third confessed she'd heard him crying through an upstairs window.
Nobody had reported it.
Nobody had asked questions.
The officers placed Vanessa in handcuffs.
She screamed that everyone was overreacting.
As they escorted her toward the patrol car, she looked directly at me.
"You'll regret this!"
I looked back without emotion.
May you like
"No," I said quietly.
"The only thing I regret is trusting you."
