CHAPTER 177
HARRY'S POV
The psychological evaluation was scheduled for 9 AM on a Tuesday, in a sterile government building that felt more like a prison than a medical facility. I sat in the waiting room watching Addison color in a notebook while social workers and child development experts prepared to determine whether our children were safe in our custody.
Three weeks had passed since the Academy Awards incident, and the media firestorm showed no signs of abating. Video analysis of our children's behavior during the crisis had sparked international debate about whether families involved in anti-trafficking work should be allowed to raise children.
"Mr. Kane?" A woman in her fifties wearing a conservative suit approached with a clipboard. "I'm Dr. Rebecca Martinez. I'll be conducting Addison's evaluation today."
"Will her parents be present during the assessment?"
"Initially, yes. But I'll also need time alone with her to evaluate her responses without parental influence."
I wanted to argue, to point out that separating our children from us in unfamiliar environments was exactly the kind of situation they'd been trained to be wary of. But I also knew that resistance would only fuel concerns about our family's psychological dynamics.
"Addison," I called softly. "Time to talk with Dr. Martinez."
She looked up from her coloring, her dark eyes immediately assessing the new adult in the room. At six years old, she'd learned to evaluate strangers for potential threats, trustworthiness, and tactical capabilities. Skills that had kept her safe but now made her seem abnormally suspicious to child development experts.
"Hello, Addison," Dr. Martinez said, kneeling to the child's level. "I'm going to ask you some questions about your family, okay?"
"Are you going to try to take me away from them?"
"I'm just here to make sure you're happy and healthy."
"I am happy and healthy. But lots of people want to hurt my family because we help children. So I have to be careful about strangers."
Dr. Martinez made notes on her clipboard, and I could see her processing Addison's matter-of-fact discussion of being targeted by criminal organizations. To a normal child development expert, it probably sounded like paranoid delusions. To us, it was simply accurate threat assessment.
"Can you tell me about a typical day at home?" Dr. Martinez asked.
"I wake up and have breakfast with Mama and the uncles. Then we do school lessons - reading and math and languages. After lunch, Uncle Harry teaches me and Liam about safety things, like how to identify dangerous people and what to do if someone tries to hurt us."
"What kind of safety things?"
"Like how to check if someone is carrying weapons by watching how they move. How to find the best hiding places in different buildings. How to tell if adults are lying about who they are."
More notes. I could see Dr. Martinez struggling to categorize information that fell completely outside normal child development frameworks.
"Do you ever feel scared at home?"
"No. I feel safe because my family knows how to protect people. But I do feel sad sometimes."
"About what?"
"About the children we couldn't save in time. Mama shows me pictures sometimes of children who got hurt because bad people took them before we could help."
"Your mother shows you pictures of trafficking victims?"
"She shows me why our work is important. So I understand that helping people sometimes means doing difficult things."
I watched Dr. Martinez's expression shift from professional curiosity to genuine concern. The idea of showing a six-year-old images related to human trafficking violated every conventional guideline for age-appropriate content.
But how do you explain to a child development expert that our daughter needed to understand the stakes involved in our family's work? That sanitizing the reality would leave her unprepared for the dangers that came with being our child?
"Addison, can you tell me about the night at the pretty party?" Dr. Martinez asked, referring to the Academy Awards incident.
"The night the bad people tried to hurt us?"
"Yes."
"It was scary at first because there were loud noises and lots of confusion. But then Mama and the uncles started protecting everyone, and I knew we would be okay."
"Were you afraid when you heard the gunshots?"
"A little. But Uncle Jax taught me that being afraid is okay as long as you don't let it stop you from doing the right thing."
"What was the right thing that night?"
"Staying safe so the adults could focus on stopping the bad people without worrying about us."
Dr. Martinez was writing rapidly now, documenting responses that probably sounded deeply concerning to someone trained in normal child psychology.
"Addison, if you could change anything about your family, what would it be?"
"I would make it so that bad people stopped hurting children, so Mama wouldn't have to be sad about the ones we can't save."
"You wouldn't change anything about how your parents work?"
"No. They help people. That's what good people do."
The evaluation continued for another hour, with Dr. Martinez asking increasingly specific questions about our children's exposure to weapons, their understanding of violence, their emotional responses to crisis situations.
With each answer, I could see her forming conclusions that would determine whether our family stayed together or was broken apart by well-intentioned authorities who couldn't understand that some children needed different preparation for the world they'd inherited.
"Thank you, Addison," Dr. Martinez said finally. "You can go back to your coloring now."
As our daughter returned to her notebook, Dr. Martinez turned to me with an expression that suggested the evaluation hadn't gone well.
"Mr. Kane, I need to be frank with you. Addison displays concerning signs of premature psychological development. Her responses suggest exposure to adult concepts and situations that could be damaging to normal child development."
"Or they suggest a child who's been prepared for the realities of her family's situation."
"A six-year-old shouldn't need to be prepared for armed assault scenarios. She shouldn't be able to identify potential weapons on strangers. She shouldn't view violence as a normal problem-solving tool."
"A six-year-old also shouldn't be the target of international criminal organizations. But that's the world our children live in."
"Which raises the question of whether that world is appropriate for children at all."
Before I could respond, my phone buzzed with an emergency alert from our security team: "Immediate evacuation required. Current location compromised."
"We need to leave," I said, standing and moving toward Addison.
"Mr. Kane, this evaluation isn't complete."
"Dr. Martinez, in about thirty seconds, people with guns are going to attempt to breach this facility to kidnap or kill my family. You can continue your evaluation after we've dealt with that threat."
"That's exactly what I'm talking about. No child should have to live with that kind of constant danger."
As alarms began blaring throughout the building and security personnel rushed to positions, I scooped up Addison and headed for the exit.
"Uncle Harry," she said calmly as we moved through corridors filling with armed guards, "is this another test?"
"No, sweetheart. This is real."
"Then we should help the security people. Dr. Martinez doesn't know how to handle bad people."
I looked down at her serious six-year-old face and realized that Dr. Martinez was right about one thing.
Our children weren't normal.
The question was whether that made them damaged, or whether it made them exactly what they needed to be to survive in the world we'd created for them.
And that was a question I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer to.
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