He reached into his pocket and pulled out a USB drive.
"But I can't live with this anymore. This is a recording from an internal meeting at the precinct. Morrison talking about quotas. How many arrests we need each month to keep the CoreCivic contracts active. He mentions protection from above. I think he's talking about Caldwell."
Isaiah took the drive. His heart was racing. "This is incredible. This could change everything."
"Just be careful," Terrence said. "These people don't play by the rules. They don't fight fair. And they'll do anything—anything—to protect themselves."
Isaiah believed him. He shouldn't have.
The night before the continued hearing, Darnell was walking home from his shift at the warehouse. He had taken the same route for months—a shortcut through the alley behind St. Michael's Church. It saved him 10 minutes, and those 10 minutes mattered when you'd been loading trucks for 8 hours and just wanted to collapse into bed.
He never saw them coming.
Four men in ski masks stepped out of the shadows. They didn't say a word. They didn't have to. The first punch caught Darnell in the stomach, doubling him over. The second crashed into his jaw, spinning him around. Then they were on him: fists and feet and something metal—a pipe or a bat—crashing against his ribs, his back, his skull.
Darnell tried to fight back. He managed to land one punch, heard someone grunt in pain, but there were four of them and one of him, and they beat him until he stopped moving. They left him bleeding on the concrete, unconscious, barely breathing.
A homeless man found him 30 minutes later and called 911.
Isaiah got the call at midnight. He ran the entire way to the hospital—12 blocks—his lungs burning, his heart pounding, his mind screaming: Please God, no. Please God, no. Please God, no.
He burst through the emergency room doors screaming his brother's name: "Darnell Green! Where is Darnell Green?!"
A nurse tried to calm him down. Security moved toward him. And then a doctor appeared—a tired-looking woman with blood on her scrubs.
"Are you family?"
"I'm his brother. Where is he? Is he okay?"
The doctor's face was carefully neutral. "Your brother is in the ICU. He has three broken ribs, a fractured skull, and significant internal bleeding. He's in surgery right now. We're doing everything we can."
Isaiah collapsed against the wall. His legs wouldn't hold him anymore. "Is he going to live?"
"We're doing everything we can," the doctor repeated. And that was all she would say.
Isaiah wasn't allowed to see Darnell for 6 hours. He sat in the waiting room the entire time, staring at nothing, praying to a God he wasn't sure he believed in anymore.
When they finally let him into the ICU, he barely recognized his brother. Darnell's face was swollen beyond recognition—purple and black and wrong, barely human. Tubes snaked from his arms, his nose, his chest. Machines beeped in steady, mournful rhythms. A ventilator breathed for him.
And on the wall above the bed, written in black marker, were seven words: Drop it, or next time he won't wake up.
Isaiah collapsed into the chair beside the bed. He took his brother's hand—the hand that had held his at their mother's funeral, that had caught him when he fell, that had never let him down.
And he broke.
For the first time in 6 months, Isaiah Green sobbed. All the walls he had built, all the defenses he had constructed, crumbled into dust. The tears poured down his face. His shoulders shook. His whole body trembled.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "Darnell, I'm so sorry. This is my fault. All of this is my fault."
Gloria arrived an hour later. When she saw her grandson lying in that bed—the boy who had given up everything to raise his little brother, who had sacrificed his dreams so others could have theirs—something inside her shattered. She fell to her knees beside Isaiah, clutching her Bible, sobbing prayers that made no sense.
Then she turned to Isaiah. Her face was wet with tears, but her eyes were fierce with desperation. "Isaiah, stop this. Please, I'm begging you."
"Grandma..."
"Your father is in solitary. Your brother is dying. If something happens to you..." Her voice broke. "I'm an old woman, Isaiah. Selfish. All I want is my family safe. Please, let it go. Let them win. I don't care anymore about justice. I just want my babies safe."
Isaiah looked at her, at Darnell, at the message on the wall. He wanted to give up. Every cell in his body screamed at him to walk away, to save what was left, to surrender.
But then he remembered something: the night they met, Terrence had asked about Darnell's schedule—what time he got off work, what route he took home. Isaiah had told him, casually, without thinking. Only Terrence knew that information.
The realization hit him like a physical blow: he had been played. He had trusted someone, let his guard down, and Darnell was paying the price.
Isaiah called Jasmine at 2:00 a.m. "The USB drive Terrence gave us—can you verify if the files are authentic?"
"Isaiah, it's 2:00 in the morning."
"Please, Jasmine, it's important."
30 minutes later, she called back. Her voice was shaking. "Isaiah... the files are fake. The metadata shows they were created 3 days ago, not 8 months like Terrence claimed. Someone manufactured this evidence."
Isaiah's blood ran cold. Terrence wasn't a whistleblower; he was a spy. Morrison's man sent to infiltrate, to gain trust, to provide fake evidence that would discredit Isaiah in court, and to report Darnell's movements to the men who beat him half to death.
He called Diana next. Her voice was shaking when she answered.