I paused for a second before smirking. “Well, Theo got what he deserved.”

“Smack!”

It was another slap on my face.

However, Giselle wasn’t the perpetrator this time. It was my daughter, Palmer.

Palmer stared at me with hostility, as if I were her sworn enemy. She said, “You’re the reason Theo is in the hospital. You’re a bad man! You’re not my daddy! As for this…”

While talking, Palmer pulled out the plushie from me and snipped it to bits with a pair of scissors.

“I’m done with this, too!”

I watched blankly as Palmer stomped on the shredded plushie, my heart broken to pieces.

The plushie was my gift to Palmer after the car crash.

Her words of appreciation were still fresh on my mind.

Palmer uttered, “I’m sorry, Daddy. I shouldn’t have wandered off. It’s my fault you got hurt protecting me.”

She added. “You’re the best daddy in the world! No one beats you! I’ll treasure this plushie the way I treasure you, Daddy!”

The past and present blurred together before my eyes.

I started to shake violently in distress.

“Giselle, we’ve been together for years. Are you honestly going to stand by as Palmer pushes Lucy and me to our graves because of a stranger?”

Furrowing her brows, Giselle didn’t look at all pleased.

“Push you to your graves?

“Dean, don’t start. I’ve already ordered for Lucy to be let down before I took you here.

“You’re just giving Theo a kidney. It’s not like it’ll kill you.”

Palmer applauded the idea.

“That’s right. You won’t die. Just do the transplant already!”

“Doctor! The donor is here. Start the surgery now.”

There were simply too many of them.

I stood no chance against them.

The only thing I could do was watch as they strapped me to the hospital bed and plunged the sedative into my veins.

“Giselle…”

Giselle looked at me indifferently, offering no response.

The anesthesia began to take hold.

As every inch of strength left my body, I lost consciousness in no time.

The next time I opened my eyes, Giselle and Palmer were no more.

“Lucy…”

Fighting back the pain, I got up and threw the covers off me. I stumbled out of bed and the hospital, my hand pressing against my wound.

The rotting body was the first thing I saw in the warehouse.

I stood there, dumbfounded.

A deafening buzz filled my ears and head.

The grief was so overwhelming I couldn’t even speak.

Tears soaked my face.

In a daze, I went outside, dragged back a chair into the warehouse, climbed onto it, and untied the rope that kept Lucy hanging for far too long.

The rope went slack.

Lucy’s body dropped to the ground with a thud.

I scrambled off the chair and held Lucy’s decaying corpse, my heart shattered.

“I came too late, didn’t I, Lucy?

“It’s alright. I’ll take you home now.”

Gritting my teeth against the pain in my abdomen, I hoisted Lucy onto my back.

“Wham!”

The pain was so intense that my leg gave out.

Lucy slipped from my grasp and hit the ground hard.

“I’m sorry, Lucy!” I cried.

Sinking to my heels, I tried to get her onto my back again.

As I leaned close to Lucy, maggots crawled out of her pale, lifeless ears.

The gruesome fact that Lucy was dead stared me right in the face.

The pain was too much for me to bear. Cradling her, I let out a harrowing scream.

“Arghhh!”

I didn’t even get a moment to keep my head above the weight of my grief.

A silhouette approached me.

Cocking my head back, I saw Theo.

Theo looked refreshed, nothing like someone who had just had surgery.

“Tsk. Oh, my. Your sister’s death is so tragic…

“But don’t put this on me. You killed your sister. I have nothing to do with it.”

Shaking to my core, I got up to give him a kick.

“Bam!”

Theo knocked me to the ground.

He said aggressively, “You’re a broken man. What makes you think you can beat me?”

Blood spilled from my surgical wound.

Agony rippled through me, and my entire body started to spasm.

I lay motionless on the floor.

Shaking his head, Theo grabbed a jerrycan of accelerant and poured the liquid all over Lucy’s body.

I, my eyes widened, shouted in a quivering voice, “Theo! What are you trying to do?”

With a chuckle, Theo pulled out a matchbox, struck a match, and flicked it away.

“Fwoom!”

Hungry flames licked across Lucy’s body.

Seeing red, I tackled Theo to the ground with everything I had. I scooped a metal pipe, ready to drag him to hell with me.

“Dean!”

Giselle and Palmer arrived at the scene on the double.

They held an urn in their hands.

That was my mother’s urn.

“Let Theo go!

“Or we’ll smash your mother’s urn!”

Giselle and Palmer cried at once

I kept my eyes on the urn.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t swing the steel pipe in my hand.

Reading my hesitation, Theo seized the moment to keep up his act. “Dean, so I took your necklace, but is that a reason for you to burn me alive?”

Not too far away, Giselle and Palmer shouted, “Dean, when have you become so vile?”

“You’ve gone too far! I can’t believe you’re trying to set Theo on fire! You don’t deserve to be my daddy!”

With shaking hands, I put down the steel pipe.

It wasn’t as if I had a choice.

I couldn’t stand by while my mother’s urn was being smashed.

Now that I was unarmed, Giselle and Palmer sprinted over to shove me back.

“Are you okay, Theo?”

“Theo…”

Rising to his feet, Theo brushed the dirt off himself and said tearfully, “If the necklace meant so much to you, I could’ve given it back. You didn’t have to take things far, Dean.”

With emotions getting the best of me, I yelled, “I wasn’t trying to burn him. He lit the match!

“He’s burning Lucy’s remains.”

Taken aback, Giselle and Palmer shifted their gazes to the lifeless body.

As Giselle and Palmer faltered, Theo immediately put on a face of hurt.

“Why are you making things up to lie to Giselle and Palmer?

“I’ve sent your sister home a long time ago. It was you. I don’t know what you have burning there. You said I deserved to die because I took your necklace.”

Theo sighed, acting like he was the bigger person who had been done dirty.

“Whatever. I’ll just drop the matter since you didn’t manage to set me on fire.”

Giselle and Palmer’s expressions hardened once more.

“This can’t be the end of the matter.

“You wanted Theo’s life over a necklace. You’re not going anywhere until you get what’s coming to you.”

The words had barely left Giselle’s lips.

“Clank!”

Giselle let the tag necklace fall and stamped it under her foot.

She was far from done, though.

Flipping the lid open, Giselle scattered the ashes into a puddled area.

“No!”

Pulling a grimace, I raced to the wet patch.

Oh, no…

The ashes were impossible to retrieve.

I watched helplessly as the ashes dissolved into the water. The pain was so overwhelming that I retched violently.

Giselle was pleased to see me in agony.

She drew close and said to me in disdain, “Don’t bother. Those aren’t really your mother’s ashes.

“This is just a little warning. Pull a stunt like that again, and you can kiss your mother’s ashes goodbye.”

I was the one who placed the ashes in the urn, so I would know whether they were hers.

Once they were gone, I pulled out my phone and dialed a number that had been sitting in my contacts for nearly a decade.

“I’m in, Ms. Whitaker, but I want ten times the amount we discussed.”