The Weight of the Cape

I Let Her Die

The ballet shoes were still in the back seat.

Pink. Satin. Size one. Curled in on themselves like they missed her feet.

That’s what gutted me. Not the duct tape. Not the drainage culvert. Not the detective clearing his throat while the coroner handed me a ziplock bag like it held more than a bracelet and a button.

No.

It was those shoes.

They were under the passenger seat. Kicked off mid-ride like always. Lily hated them. Said they made her toes feel “squished and annoyed.” That’s how she talked—like the world was something to be negotiated with, and if it didn’t listen, she’d out-argue it.

I used to tell her she’d grow into them.

She never will.

The driver said he was out of the car for “less than five minutes.” The bodyguard said he was taking a piss. The head of security blamed the garage lighting, the school’s faulty surveillance, and the fact that no one expected someone to breach a high-profile drop-off zone in broad daylight.

All of them had reasons.

None of them had Lily.

The news got hold of it within an hour. Helicopters outside the school. Anchor voices pitched to solemn. A scroll bar at the bottom: VALECORP HEIR’S DAUGHTER ABDUCTED – AMBER ALERT ISSUED.

I watched that crawl until the screen blurred.

Three days. No ransom. No demands. Just static.

They found her on the fourth, five miles outside Vegas, in a flood control culvert lined with piss and old soda cans.

She was wearing her favorite hoodie. The purple one with the cartoon bats.

I remember that because it was the one thing that made me fall. I saw it in the photo. Just the edge of it under the sheet. Purple. Cotton. Washed so many times it had no shape left.

I sat in my penthouse and watched the press conference where Metro PD told the public there were “no strong leads at this time.”

No strong leads.

Lily was eight.

Her favorite movie was The Iron Giant. Her favorite food was plain spaghetti with ketchup, which she swore was “gourmet if you eat it slow.”

She hated my job. Hated when I took calls at dinner. Once, she hid my phone in the dog’s water bowl because she wanted me to listen to her tell me a dream she had about flying.

She used to ask me why I was always in a hurry.

I didn’t have an answer then.

Now I do.

Because I thought there’d be time.

I thought there’d be more.

The funeral was private. White lilies, because I couldn’t bring myself to choose anything else. My ex-wife cried the way you cry when the world has folded in half. She clutched my arm so tight it left bruises.

People spoke. Pastors. Executives. An old college friend I hadn’t seen since grad school told a story about me teaching Lily to ride a bike in the underground parking garage of my office building. I didn’t remember doing that.

Maybe I was on a call.

I left early. Didn’t speak to the press. Didn’t go home.

I went to the estate in Henderson, locked myself in the study, poured a glass of scotch, and watched The Dark Knight on mute.

Not for comfort.

For research.

I watched the way he moved. The way he entered a room like gravity bent around him. The way criminals ran when they realized he wasn’t there to negotiate.

I watched him break bones and vanish into the night.

And I thought: he gets it.

He understands what it means to lose a family.

He understands what it means to know the world will never be fair, never be safe, never be punished.

And he decided to become something worse. Something they would fear.

I sat in that study for three days. No food. No light. Just blueprints, schematics, old comic books and psychological profiles.

Then I made the first phone call.

It was to someone I once paid off to disappear after a black-ops scandal in Syria. Now he trains foreign bodyguards in non-extradition countries.

I wired $6 million to his offshore account. The next day, he was at my estate with three duffel bags, a black eye, and a dead stare.

He didn’t ask what I wanted.

He just asked: “When do we start?”