I remember this morning — the morning I move into the house with five other workers

The white fifteen-passenger van turned off Oakridge Lane at exactly 5:48 a.m., its headlights cutting through the rising dust of the driveway.

Julian Mercer was driving.

Through the tinted windshield, he looked immaculate as always: fresh haircut, a light-blue tailored western shirt with pearl snaps, and a polished silver belt buckle that gleamed under the dashboard illumination. He pulled the van up to the porch steps, cut the engine, and stepped down onto the gravel, carrying a cardboard tray holding six large cups of convenience-store coffee.

"Morning, team!" Julian called out, his baritone voice ringing cheerful and bright across the yard. "Got your morning fuel! Big day at the Delano packing shed! We’re running the sweet-table lines until ten tonight—plenty of overtime for everyone!"

He walked up the three wooden steps of the porch, pushing the front screen door open with his elbow.

He stopped dead in his tracks.

Standing in the center of the kitchen, bathed in the harsh overhead fluorescent light, were the six of us.

We weren't lined up like sheep. We weren't holding paper coffee vouchers.

We were standing in an unbroken semicircle around the kitchen table, our arms crossed over our chests, our eyes fixed on him with the cold, diagnostic calm of an execution panel.

On the table in front of me sat Vince Garrity’s aluminum clipboard, the open plastic intake tub, and the master red-ribboned Indenture Agreement spread open across the linoleum.

Julian’s smile faltered. His eyes flickered across our faces, then darted toward the living room hallway.

"Vince?" Julian called out, a sudden, nervous edge sharpening his voice. "Vince, where are you? Why aren't these guys staged at the van?"

From the shadows of the living room came a muffled, furious roar, followed by the violent, metallic rattling of heavy cast-iron radiator pipes being shaken against the floorboards.

"Julian! Shoot this bastard! He cuffed me to the radiator! Shoot him!"

Julian dropped the coffee tray.

The cardboard collapsed onto the floor, sending six cups of hot, sugary coffee splashing across the threshold in a brown, steaming puddle.

His hand instinctively flew to the small of his back, his fingers reaching beneath the hem of his western shirt for the compact semi-automatic he carried in an inside-the-waistband holster.

He never cleared the leather.

Before his fingers could wrap around the grip, Elena Cruz moved with the terrifying speed of an athlete who had spent ten years loading forty-ton freight trucks. She stepped forward, caught his right wrist with both hands, twisted his arm downward in an aggressive joint lock, and drove his shoulder hard against the doorframe.

CRACK.

Julian let out a sharp, breathless shriek of agony as his pistol slipped from his holster, clattering loudly across the linoleum before Marco kicked it three yards away under the kitchen sink.

"Don't move an inch, Julian," I said, stepping around the table, holding my phone in my left hand.

Julian was pinned against the wall, his cheek pressed flat against the wood paneling, his expensive shirt ripped at the shoulder. The charming, sophisticated community contractor was completely obliterated; his face was purple with rage, his eyes wild with feral, cornered hatred.

"You're dead, Morgan!" Julian hissed, spittle flying from his lips. "You hear me?! You're all dead! I have thirty packing houses in this valley! I have the county sheriff on my payroll! You think six broke transient laborers can take down Mercer Logistics?! You'll be buried in an unmapped orchard ditch before the sun sets!"

"The county sheriff isn't coming today, Julian," I said, my voice dropping into an octave of terrifying, mechanical quiet.

I turned the screen of my phone toward his face.

The display was no longer running a local recording interface.

It was connected to a live multi-agency video conference room hosted by the United States Department of Justice — Civil Rights Division (Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit) and the California Department of Industrial Relations.

On the screen sat three prosecutors in dark suits, surrounded by federal marshals in tactical windbreakers.

"Julian Mercer," the lead federal prosecutor, a sharp-featured woman named Sarah Vance, spoke clearly through the phone’s speaker. "At 4:30 this morning, this task force reviewed the mirrored financial archives and physical surveillance logs transmitted from 412 Oakridge Lane."

Julian stopped thrashing. His breath hitched in his throat with a wet, ragged gasp.

"Federal search warrants have been executed simultaneously across your central corporate offices in Bakersfield, your secondary holding compound in Tulare, and your personal residence in Fresno," Prosecutor Vance continued, her voice cold as an iceberg. "Three hundred thousand dollars in illicit scrip vouchers have been seized from your safe deposit boxes. Your bank accounts in Nevada and the Cayman Islands have been frozen under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act."

Julian’s knees buckled.

Elena released her grip, and the corporate raider slid down the doorframe, collapsing into the puddle of spilled coffee on the floor, his head bowed, his tailored trousers ruined by grime and cold liquid.

"How...?" Julian croaked, his voice cracking into a pathetic, broken wheeze. "How did you get the offshore account numbers? Those files were encrypted with thirty-two-character keys..."

I looked down at the man who had stolen two years of my first life, who had treated human beings as disposable farm equipment, and who had believed that poverty was an invitation to slavery.