Chapter 15 - The Violet Fund
The idea wasn't mine.
It was Violet's.
When investigators recovered additional assets, victims received restitution through the courts.
But there were families whose losses couldn't be calculated neatly.
Therapy.
Relocation.
Legal costs.
Lost work.
Security upgrades.
Violet proposed creating a nonprofit fund with private donations and money Rachel legally received through a whistleblower award.
She didn't want her name on it.
Everyone else did.
Eventually she surrendered.
The Violet Project began in a rented office above a dentist.
Six months later, it had helped thirty-seven families.
Ethan volunteered.
Harper handled administrative work.
Rachel, after completing her testimony obligations, became an advocate for people trapped in coercive relationships.
And me?
I learned how to assemble office furniture.
Badly.
“You've operated in combat zones,” Violet said while watching me struggle with a desk.
“I don't see the relevance.”
“You've attached the leg backward.”
“The instructions are poorly written.”
“They're pictures.”
“Hostile pictures.”
She laughed.
That laugh became my favorite sound in the world.
Then her seventeenth birthday arrived.
This time I was home.
No deployment.
No video call.
No empty chair.
At 4:07 p.m.—exactly one year after I had found her—I stood in the kitchen holding a cake.
Violet walked downstairs.
She stopped.
The cake leaned noticeably to one side.
“What happened?”
“I baked.”
“You were allowed to?”
“Apparently.”
She hugged me.
And for a moment, everything was simple.
But later that evening, someone placed an envelope beneath our front door.
No stamp.
No return address.
Inside was a photograph of Victor Hale.
May you like
And a handwritten sentence:
YOU CAUGHT THE WRONG MAN.
