The Scapegoat Daughter

My brother didn't die. He just used a hurricane to run away, leaving me to pay for his escape. For eight agonizing years, my parents blamed me, punishing me for a "sin" I didn't commit, calling my very existence a penance for their lost golden child. On my nineteenth birthday, I tried to break free from their toxic grip. But as a notorious killer stalked me, I begged my father-a detective hunting this very monster-for help. He had already broken my only self-defense, a pepper spray he'd derided as a "useless toy," and then he dismissed my desperate texts as just another one of my dramatic cries for attention. I died because of their callous neglect, because the weapon I relied on failed me. As a ghost, I watched in horrifying silence as they grieved for a son who was never truly gone, while simultaneously dismissing my actual death. My dismembered body on their evidence board was just another case; my own parents were too consumed by mourning a lie to see the devastating truth of my final moments. How could they be so utterly blind? How could they condemn me for a lie, only to be completely untouched by my real, horrific truth? My entire life was an inconvenience, my death an unacknowledged whisper. But then, Ethan returned, alive, shattering their carefully constructed grief and revealing his selfish deception. And my killer, caught by my father, delivered the final, crushing blow: a confession detailing how my parents' neglect had sealed my fate, forcing my father to finally confront his own daughter's terrifying final pleas.