Chapter 1
In the cold, dead silence of the morgue, I clutched my little girl's mangled, unrecognizable corpse, my eyes burned scarlet with agony and rage.
But my husband Johan Blake? He was off celebrating with his first love, throwing a party for her daughter after her successful heart transplant that gave the little girl a brand new, healthy life.
I had a video of that party pulled up on my phone, and right there on the screen Johan held court, talking glibly to the gathered guests.
"The day my daughter found out she was terminal, she told me she wanted to donate her heart," he said. "She was such a kind little girl. If she could see what happened up there, she'd be so happy her heart saved Maine."
He paused, then shifted his tone to a sorrowful sigh. "Unfortunately, my wife Audrey is selfish. She doesn't even have as much moral awareness as my own daughter."
Right by his side, his first love, Trixie, grabbed Johan's hand, her eyes brimming with gratitude, and gushed, "Johan, you have to thank Audrey for me. Her little girl is gone, but my daughter is alive because of her!
"Thank her for being so selfless. From now on, let my daughter take Caren's place and stay by your side forever!"
The second the words left her mouth, Johan pulled her and little Maine into his arms, looking absolutely overcome with emotion.
There they stood, the three of them, the perfect, loving little family he'd always wanted.
Not a single person in that room could hold back their tears.
Everyone burst into applause and showered them with warm, heartfelt blessings.
When the video finished playing, it automatically looped back to the start.
Once again, Johan's self-righteous, hypocritical voice echoed through the empty, icy morgue.
I couldn't take another second of it. Clutching my daughter's mangled remains, I wound up and slammed my phone as hard as I could into the concrete wall.
The phone clattered onto the floor, shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.
That God-awful voice finally went silent.
But the image of Johan holding those two close was burned into my mind, and it dragged me back to his birthday, when Caren and I crowded around him to sing happy birthday and watch him make his wish.
Back then, he'd told me his greatest wish was for the three of us to stay healthy and together forever.
But everything changed the day his first love came back to the country with her dying little girl.
I smoothed my daughter's body into position and paid a premium to hire a mortuary beautician.
I wanted her face restored before we cremated and buried her.
She'd always cared so much about how she looked. For her face to be ruined like this… she'd be heartbroken if she knew.
Even though she wasn't my biological daughter, I'd raised her for years, cherished her like she was my own flesh and blood, holding her like precious glass in the palm of my hand. The bond between us was as real as it gets.
Six years ago, Trixie and I were giving birth at the same hospital. The nurse who delivered our babies was actually a former classmate Trixie had bullied back in school.
To get her revenge, she'd secretly switched our babies when no one was looking.
I never found out the truth until this morning, when something felt off when I was donating blood to Caren.
I launched an investigation, and that's when the whole story came out.
When the mortician arrived, she tried everything she could, but she could only restore thirty percent of Caren's original features.
She looked at me with a troubled frown and said, "Ms. Audrey, I'm so sorry. Your daughter's face was damaged far too severely. I did my best to smooth out the worst of the damage, but I can't bring her original face back completely."
My hand trembled as I brushed it across my daughter's cheek. The pitted, uneven texture under my fingers twisted my heart so sharply I almost burst into tears.
I tucked her favorite teddy bear, the one she'd loved all her life, right next to her head. Then I waved the mortician away and told her to leave me alone.
I was going to push my daughter to the crematory myself. The path through the morgue was so dark. She'd be scared if I wasn't there with her.
But the second I pulled open the morgue door, a group of men in black windbreakers came barreling straight inside.
They ripped off the white shroud covering my daughter, took one quick look to confirm it was her, and immediately pulled out a black body bag to drag her away.
I lunged forward and threw myself between them and Caren, my eyes bulging with rage as I screamed, "Where are you taking my daughter?"
"Ma'am, don't make this harder on us. This is Mr. Blake's order."
I gaped at the man who'd just spoken. It was the head of security of Johan's company!
I snarled through gritted teeth. "You already got her heart! What more does Johan want from her?"
The security chief glanced at me, then continued, "Mr. Johan says Miss Trixie is an intern forensic pathologist. She needs practice on a real corpse before she can get her full license. He told us to bring your daughter to her for practice."
"How dare he do this? Is Johan a f*****g animal?"
The goons didn't waste another word. They hefted Caren's body and started to carry her out.
She might not have been my blood daughter, but I could never let Caren's dead body be desecrated by her own father after she was already gone.
I threw myself at them to block their way, only for the security chief to send me crashing to the cold floor with a brutal kick.
He ground his leather shoe hard into my skull, sneering as he spat, "I call you Mrs. Blake and you actually think you're somebody important? Miss Trixie is the one Mr. Johan loves more than anything now. Know your damn place!"
After that, he slammed his weight down onto my legs, snapping both of them clean, then wrenched his foot away and led his men out the door.
I stared helplessly at their retreating backs, and the searing, blinding pain that tore through my body swallowed everything into darkness.
