Chapter 5

Jaimen stared at my mother's tear-streaked, defiant face. He refused to believe her.

"Lies," he hissed, his grip tightening on her throat. "You're all liars. A family of snakes."

He sneered. "She's not dead. She's just hiding. She's using this as an excuse to escape her duty." His voice dripped with self-righteous anger. "The doctor said the procedure was perfectly safe! A little bone marrow to save a life. But no, she had to be selfish. She had to run away and play the victim."

He let go of her throat, and my mother crumpled to the floor, gasping for air.

"Hold her down," Jaimen commanded his bodyguards. Two large men pinned my mother's frail body to the expensive rug.

"You want to play games, Christeen?" Jaimen shouted at the empty air, pulling a heavy leather belt from his trousers. "Let's play."

He brought the belt down hard on my mother's back. The sound echoed in the silent office. My mother cried out, a thin, sharp sound of pain.

"I'm sending this to you, Christeen," he said, pulling out his phone and starting a video recording. "Every second you stay hidden is another lash on your mother's back. Let's see how long your filial piety lasts."

I floated above them, a phantom screaming in silence. I rushed towards him, my spectral hands reaching for the belt, for my mother, but they passed right through. I was a prisoner in my own memory, forced to watch this nightmare unfold. I could do nothing. Nothing.

Jaimen checked his phone. No response. His eyes grew colder.

"Still not coming out?" he said softly. He delivered another vicious strike.

My mother's body convulsed. She coughed, a spray of blood dotting the white wool of the rug. Yet, she looked up at him, her eyes still burning with a terrible clarity.

"She's dead," she whispered, her voice hoarse. "Just kill me too. Let me go be with her."

Ivanna, seeing her cue, rushed forward and knelt beside Jaimen. "Jaimen, stop! Please, you'll kill her!" she cried, grabbing his arm. "I can't bear to see this. She's still my aunt, after all."

Jaimen looked down at her, a contemptuous smile on his face. "So soft-hearted, Ivanna. That's why you get hurt." He tossed the belt aside. "But you're right. Beating her is useless."

A new, terrifying idea lit up his eyes. "There's more than one way to find a match."

He snapped his fingers. "Get a medical team here. Now. We're doing a bone marrow compatibility test. On her."

He gestured to my mother.

"No anesthetic," he added, his voice chillingly casual as he resumed filming. "I want Christeen to hear her mother's screams."

The medical team arrived. They dragged my mother onto a sofa, the needle thick and menacing. She didn't have the strength left to fight. Her screams filled the room as they forced the needle into her bone, a raw, agonizing sound that echoed my own silent torment. Jaimen sent the video, his face impassive.

Just then, his assistant burst into the room again, looking even more panicked than before. He was holding my old, cracked cell phone.

"Mr. Cline," he stammered, his eyes wide with horror. "We... we found her. Christeen Hahn."

He held up a thick file. "This is the police report. The coroner's report. They found her body two weeks after... after the alley incident. She was... she was found in a ditch outside the city."

The assistant' s voice dropped to a near whisper. "She was unidentified for years. They just confirmed her identity an hour ago through dental records from her mother's file."