THE PETITION

von Thomas Belluomini

78 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

For ten years, Angelo Storm kept two lives running in perfect, careful order: the quiet one, raising his nine-year-old son Don in a small house in West Fresno, and the other one, moving freight and favors through the city's informal economy with a discipline that had never once let him down.Then a lie on a piece of paper undoes both of them in a single morning.When county caseworkers and sheriff's deputies arrive at Don's elementary school with an emergency removal order built on an allegation that doesn't exist, Angelo discovers that the tools that have always protected him - reputation, cash, the right word in the right ear - mean nothing against a machine that runs on signatures, seals, and sealed dockets. Every favor he calls in goes soft the moment the word county enters the conversation. Every door he tries to force only proves how little force accomplishes against an institution that never has to raise its voice.With a worn-down legal aid attorney, a detective who's stopped believing his own department's excuses, and a source inside the system who has more to lose than anyone, Angelo starts building something he's never had to build before: a case. Billing codes. Shell companies. A numbering system that quietly erases children from the record - and a name, Marcus Vance, that keeps surfacing no matter which wall Angelo tries to look behind.It isn't enough. Not yet. Every answer Angelo earns costs him something, and by the time a judge finally forces the county's hand, the trail meant to lead him back to his son has gone cold in a way no lie ever could - it's simply vanished, on paper, exactly like all the others before him.The Petition is the first chapter in a story about what it costs to fight an institution on its own terms - and what a father is willing to become in order to get his son back.

• Reihe: THE PETITION
• ISBN: 9798174141049
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 23.09.2026
• Größe: 203 x 127 mm
• Verlag: Independently published