Love's Betrayal: The Unseen Daughter

As a ghost, I watched my parents arrive at my crime scene. My mother, a renowned surgeon, and my father, the District Attorney, were there to consult on the brutal murder of an unidentified young woman.

That young woman was me. But they didn't know. To them, I was just Jane Doe, a messy case and an inconvenient headline.

My mother examined my broken body with chilling detachment, her analysis of the torture wounds purely clinical. My father arrived, complaining about the political fallout and the bad press.

Standing just feet from my corpse, they discussed their "missing" daughter-me.

"She's just being dramatic," my father scoffed. "Probably shacked up with some loser to get back at us."

They were more worried about my adopted brother, the golden boy Javon, and his upcoming championship game. I was the family's problem in life, and it seemed I was an even bigger problem in death.

The irony was a physical weight. They were talking about me, their lost daughter, while my body lay decomposing at their feet. They were blind, wrapped up in their perfect lives and their love for the son who orchestrated my end.

But they would find out. The killer made one mistake. He forced me to swallow a tiny pet microchip, a clue registered in my name. A piece of evidence that would not only give me back my identity but would expose the monster they called a son and burn their perfect world to the ground.

Chapter 1

The first thing I noticed was the damp smell of decay. It clung to the overgrown weeds and seeped into the muddy ground beneath the overpass. It was the smell of my own body.

A jogger found me. His gasp was a sharp tear in the morning quiet. He fumbled for his phone, his voice shaking as he spoke to the 911 operator.

"There's a body. A girl. Oh God, it's bad."

I watched him, a ghost tethered to the thing I used to be. The world had gone hazy, like looking through water, but I could see him. I could see everything.

Soon, the area was flooded with the flashing red and blue lights of police cars. Yellow tape went up, creating a neat, official box around the chaos of my death. They moved with a practiced calm, their voices low and serious.

Then, a sleek black sedan pulled up. A woman stepped out, and a cold stillness settled over my phantom form.

My mother.

Dr. Diane Ochoa. Renowned ER trauma surgeon. She wore her authority like the expensive coat draped over her shoulders. Her face was a mask of professional focus.

"Diane, thanks for coming," a detective said, leading her under the tape. "It's a mess. We need your eye before the ME gets here."

"Of course," she said. Her voice was clipped, efficient. The same voice she used when I tried to tell her about my day.

She walked towards me, her expensive leather shoes sinking slightly into the soft earth. She didn't flinch. She'd seen worse, I knew. She saw worse every day in her pristine, sterile emergency room.

Her gaze swept over the scene, taking in the details with a chilling detachment. She knelt beside my broken form, her movements precise. She was a scientist studying a specimen.

"No visible ID," the detective noted.

Diane nodded, her eyes fixed on the brutal injuries that made my face unrecognizable. "The killer didn't want her found quickly. Or identified."

She pulled on a pair of latex gloves, the snap echoing in the unnatural silence. I watched her hands, the same hands that had once held me as a baby. The same hands that had pushed me away when I tried to hug her last week.

She began her preliminary examination, her touch impersonal and clinical. She noted the defensive wounds on my arms, the broken fingers. She pointed out the ligature marks around my neck.

"Strangled," she murmured, more to herself than to anyone else. "But not before... other things happened."

There was no horror in her voice. Only analysis. She was a puzzle solver, and I was the most complicated puzzle she'd ever faced. She just didn't know it yet.

Then, she did something that made my non-existent heart ache. She reached out and gently brushed a matted strand of hair from my cheek. It was a gesture of tenderness, a flicker of humanity I had so rarely received from her in life.

I had spent my entire existence begging for a touch like that. A touch that said she saw me.

Now, in death, a stranger received it.

She didn't know it was me. To her, I was just Jane Doe. A case. A headline in the making that would be an annoyance for her husband, the District Attorney.

I was a problem for them in life. It seemed I would be a problem in death, too.

Her professional mask was perfect. Not a single crack. She stood up, stripping off the gloves.

"Victim is a young woman, late teens, maybe early twenties. Severe blunt force trauma to the head and face. Evidence of torture. Time of death is likely within the last 48 to 72 hours."

She gave her report to the detective, her voice steady.

But I saw it. A slight tremor in her hand as she tucked it into her pocket. A flicker of something in her eyes. Not recognition. Not yet.

It was something else. A buried, professional weariness. Or maybe, just maybe, a splinter of the horror she refused to let herself feel.

She was the best at her job because she could turn off her emotions. She had to. But I wondered, as I hovered in the cold air, if she ever turned them back on.

Especially for me.