Melissa Chun.
“Mr. Mullins, thank you for agreeing to meet. Can you come tomorrow? Morning would be best. I have something to show you. Something Paula left behind.”
Gene arranged to drive to San Diego the next morning.
That night, he sat with Leanne and Marcus, reviewing everything they had so far.
“It’s a lot of circumstantial evidence,” Marcus said. “But it’s building.”
“We need someone from the inside,” Gene said. “A current employee. Someone who’ll talk.”
“You think anyone like that exists?” Marcus asked.
“Everyone has a breaking point. The Sparks push people past theirs every day. One of their employees has to have reached it.”
Leanne sat forward, wincing slightly as she moved.
“Dad, I might know someone. Carolina Wells. She was a therapist there. She was kind to me. When I was in the center before they moved me to the house, she slipped me extra food, gave me books to read. Small things.”
“What happened to her?”
“Brent had her fired. Two months ago.”
Gene looked at Marcus. “Can you find her?”
While Marcus worked, Gene’s phone buzzed again with another threatening text, this one from Brent’s number.
You’re making things worse for Leanne. Drop this and we’ll get her the help she needs. Continue and we’ll have to take more drastic measures.
Gene took a screenshot and forwarded it to McIntyre. Then he sent Brent a reply.
Come at me and I’ll bury you.
The response came back almost immediately.
You can’t touch us. We’re untouchable.
Gene smiled.
That was what they all said, right before he ruined them.
Marcus looked up from the laptop.
“Found her. Carolina Wells. Thirty-two. Licensed therapist. Unemployed since leaving Sparks. Lives about twenty minutes from here. No phone number, but I have an address.”
“Good. We’ll pay her a visit tomorrow after I get back from San Diego.”
That night Gene did not sleep. He stood in his office, staring at the wall of evidence.
The Sparks family believed they were safe behind their wealth and connections. They had spent years perfecting their system: break people, eliminate anyone who fought back, buy off anyone who could stop them.
But they had never faced someone like Gene.
Someone who knew how to investigate. How to build a narrative. How to weaponize truth. More than that, someone with nothing left to lose.
He would burn his career to the ground if it meant justice for Leanne. He would spend every dollar. He would risk everything. Some things mattered more than money, more than success, more than safety.
Family mattered. Truth mattered. Justice mattered.
And the Sparks family was about to learn what happened when they targeted the wrong man’s daughter.
Gene pulled out his camera and began recording. This was how all his documentaries started—with a statement of purpose, a promise to the audience.
“My name is Gene Mullins,” he said to the lens. “Eighteen months ago, my daughter married into the Sparks family. I had doubts, but I trusted her judgment. I was wrong. The Sparks family runs rehabilitation centers across the Southwest. They claim to help people. Instead, they torture them, drug them, and kill anyone who tries to expose them. They hurt my daughter, and I’m going to make them pay.”
He stopped recording and backed up the file.
Then he started planning.
The Sparks family thought they were hunters. They had stalked Leanne, studied her, trapped her. They did not realize they had caught a tiger’s cub. Now the tiger was coming for them.
And Gene Mullins did not just bite back.
He went for the throat.
Melissa Chun’s house was a small bungalow in a quiet San Diego neighborhood. She opened the door before Gene could knock, as if she had been waiting for him.
“Mr. Mullins. Come in.”
She was in her early forties, wearing jeans and a faded UCLA sweatshirt. Her eyes were sad but fierce. Gene recognized that look. He had seen it in the mirror after Sarah died.
“Thank you for seeing me.”
“You’re the first person who’s asked about Paula in two years,” Melissa said. “Everyone else wanted me to move on. Stop making trouble.”
She led him into a small office lined with boxes.
“These are Paula’s things. I couldn’t bring myself to go through them. But after you called, I started looking.”
She took out a laptop.
“Paula kept journals. They’re encrypted, but I figured out her password.”
Melissa’s voice cracked.
“It was my birthday. She always remembered.”
