My daughter has been kidnapped, and the kidnapper is asking for five million dollars as ransom.

I can just about scrounge the money together, but the kidnapper makes it clear that he wants a life in exchange for my daughter's.

He'll take the money and kill the person who brings it to him.

I smoke throughout the night, my eyes bloodshot as I try to think of something. Then, I fix my gaze on my mother, who is now senile and insane.

My daughter was kidnapped.

The ransom was five million. I could barely scrape the money together, but the kidnappers made it clear…

A life for a life.

Even if they took the money, they would still kill whoever delivered the ransom.

With my eyes bloodshot, I spent the entire night smoking to the point that the room was filled with thick smoke.

When the cigarette burned to my fingertips, the pain snapped me out of my haze. I jerked my hand and crushed the butt into an ashtray already overflowing with stubs.

My wife, Hope Chaplin, couldn't take it anymore. Her nails dug deep into my arm. Her eyes, swollen and bloodshot from crying for two straight days, glared at me.

"Hunter Zehm, it's your daughter we're talking about!" she screamed, her voice trembling with desperation. "If something happens to her, I won't be able to go on living!"

I gritted my teeth, trembling as I lit another cigarette. I looked up, the smoke curling around me, and saw my elderly mother sitting by the coffee table, carefully peeling an apple.

She was only in her 60s, but years of hardship left her skin sagging and wrinkled, her face and hands resembling dry, cracked bark.

From time to time, she would glance at the small stool by her feet and grin. Her cloudy eyes were murky like stagnant water.

In her hoarse, barely audible voice, she murmured, "Hunter, I'm peeling an apple for you. Apples are good—nutritious. Eat them, and you'll get smarter…"

My nose stung, and an invisible needle seemed to stab into my heart. I hastily averted my gaze, and my vision blurred. Finally, I forced out three words from the depths of my throat.

"Call the police."

Hope lost it on the spot. Her voice, sharp as a blade, pierced my eardrums. "Hunter, are you insane? The kidnappers said if we call the police—"

She stopped abruptly, choking on the rest of her sentence. After taking a couple of shaky breaths, she pointed furiously at my mother, who was seated by the coffee table.

"They want one of us dead, right? Send your mother! She's a crazy old fool, and she's over 60. She's lived long enough! Even if she lives a few more years, she'll just waste our money on food. It's better to trade her life for Melody's!"

"Hope!" I slammed my hand on the coffee table, the impact numbing my arm. My eyes burned with fury. "She's my mother!"

Hope yelled back just as loudly, "And Melody is my daughter! She's only six! Right now, she's in the hands of kidnappers—who knows if she's hurt or suffering?"

Tears streamed down her face again, her once beautiful features contorted into something ugly. "I'm telling you, Hunter, if something happens to Melody, I can't go on living. Neither you nor your mother will, either!"

My heart felt like it was being shredded to pieces.

Melody was my daughter, too. She was my precious little girl whom I cherished for the last six years.

But how could I sacrifice the woman who brought me into the world and raised me?

My teeth clenched so hard, they ached as I trembled, fumbling to unlock my phone with sweat-slicked fingers. I failed repeatedly.

Seeing this, Hope lunged at me, clawing, kicking, and even biting like a wild animal cornered with no way out.

"What are you doing, Hunter? What are you doing? You can't call the police! You can't!"

Her sharp nails almost gouged into my eye socket. I shoved her off me. In a burst of uncontrollable rage, I slapped her hard across the face.

Hope fell to the floor, her hair disheveled, one cheek swollen red. She tried to get up several times but failed. Her gaze became vacant, and her pale, cracked lips trembled as she muttered, "It's all your fault, Hunter. If you'd watched over Melody properly, she wouldn't have gone missing...

"Melody, my poor Melody..."

Shame gnawed at me, leaving me feeling utterly worthless.

Two days ago, I took Melody to a nearby amusement park. She vanished in the brief moment I looked down to reply to a message.

Melody was an obedient child, timid by nature. Without Hope or me giving her permission, she would never wander into an unfamiliar place on her own.

But surveillance footage showed otherwise. It captured her seemingly spotting something familiar, waving at it, and then running out of the camera's view with a smile.

We searched everywhere among familiar friends and acquaintances. Just as we were about to call the police, a letter was delivered by the security guard.

It read, "Call the police, and you'll see her dead."

Later that evening, the security guard handed over a video.

The background showed an abandoned concrete building.

Melody was huddled in a corner, her small body filthy, her hands and feet bound tightly with duct tape, and a coarse cloth stuffed into her mouth. Beyond that, the video didn't reveal much.

The kidnapper didn't appear on screen but spoke in a cold, distorted voice altered by a voice changer, laying out their demands.

Five million.

And a life for a life.

I could gather five million. Even if it were ten or 20 million, I would sell everything, take out loans, and even resort to loan sharks to save Melody.

But the demand for a life…

I had to call the police. There was no other way.

Just pressing those three buttons soaked me in a cold sweat. My finger hovered over the dial button. However, as if weighed down by an invisible mountain, I couldn't click on it.

Before I could press it, the screen suddenly lit up with an incoming call.

An unknown number.

My heart jolted violently, as though it would explode from the pressure. A paralyzing sense of dread swept over me. My fingers trembled as I swiped to answer the call.

I held the phone to my ear.

All I heard was silence.

The only sound was my own rough, broken breathing, loud and unsteady like the rasp of a bellows.

In that instant, I knew that this was a call from the kidnapper.

He was watching us! He knew I was about to call the police. That was why he called—to warn me!

At that moment, the scales in my mind tipped violently to one side, and an overwhelming wave of regret surged through me.

If anything happened to Melody…

My throat felt like it was blocked by something. I opened my mouth wide in a desperate attempt to speak, but no words came out.

It was Hope, who collapsed on the floor, who realized what was happening. She suddenly lunged forward, snatching the phone from my hand.

She knelt on the ground, babbling incoherently in desperation. Her face was streaked with tears and snot.

"We won't call the police! We promise not to call the police! Please, I beg you, don't hurt Melody. Don't hurt Melody. She's just a little girl…

"If you want someone dead, I'll do it! Kill me! Just kill me! But don't harm my daughter…"

By the time I crawled over, she had already let the phone drop from her hands, her movements listless and dazed.

The call had ended.

I pulled her trembling body into my arms, holding her tightly. My voice, dull and hoarse, slipped out almost mechanically. "I understand. I'll send Mom… Melody will come back safely."

Yes. Melody had to be fine.

Besides, Mom loved me so much. She would definitely agree to it.

Mom was the person who loved me most in the world.

I had an older brother years ago. When he was ten, he drowned in the river while no one was watching. By the time his body was retrieved, it was grotesquely bloated and looked horrifying.

Mom locked herself in her room for three whole days, refusing food and water. She even attempted to ingest pesticides multiple times.

It was my cries, my desperate screams of "Mom!" that echoed outside her door, that finally pulled her back from the brink of death. My voice was reduced to bloodied hoarseness by then.

From that day forward, all the love that once belonged to my brother was poured into me a hundredfold.

Mom protected me in every way possible like I was the apple of her eye.

For me, the grief over my brother's death didn't last long. What lingered was the selfish joy of monopolizing all of Mom's love and care.

But when I hit my teenage years, that meticulous care began to feel like a suffocating cage, pressing down on me until I could barely breathe.

Mom would strictly dictate my every moment, decide who I could associate with, and secretly search my room and even my trash.

If I went out for an hour, she would call to check in on me five times. A minor bruise on me would prompt her to storm into school and cause a scene.

My classmates cornered me in the restroom, mocking me for being a baby who hadn't been weaned yet. They yanked my pants down, jeering, wanting to see if I'd even grown anything.

I couldn't take it anymore. In my rebellion, I grew wild and unruly. I smashed my phone and ran away from home.

Late at night, I unexpectedly ran into a creep who dragged me into a dark alley and molested me.

Thankfully, Mom was still looking for me in the dead of night. She heard my screams and came just in time, fighting that creep with her life.

However, the creep pulled out a knife and stabbed her several times.

She couldn't fight back, so she shielded me with her body, forcing a twisted smile at me through her pain.

At that moment, my rebellion ended, brief and dramatic as it had been.

I truly understood that there was no one in this world who loved me more than Mom.

She endured countless hardships to raise me, yet she never got to enjoy a peaceful life. She spent six years in prison, then ten more in a psychiatric hospital.

When I finally brought her home, she had developed dementia. Most of the time, her mind was a haze, but in rare moments of clarity, she would recognize only me and Melody.

And now, she had to die.

I sat silently on a small stool at her feet, my back hunched so low my chin nearly touched my chest.

Her frail hands held out a bruised apple with a bumpy surface, bringing it up to my face.

"Hunter, have an apple. Apples are good—nutritious. Eat them, and you'll get smarter..."

In my field of vision, her sleeve had pulled back, revealing a jagged scar running up her arm.

It was from that night when she fought to take the knife. Afterward, when she covered my eyes, the sticky blood from her wrist wound dripped down my cheek, sliding behind my ear.

Tears gushed from my eyes instantly. I knelt forward, pressing my face against that scar, my lips trembling as I sobbed loudly. "Mom, I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

…

We prepared the ransom.

When it was time and we arrived at the place for the exchange, we parked the car beneath the abandoned building.

Knowing we might be under constant surveillance, we dared not make any reckless moves. All we could do was repeatedly instruct Mom on what to do.

She, in her muddled state, couldn't understand. She kept flashing a silly smile at me.

Hope was on the verge of a breakdown, her fingers digging into Mom's shoulders as she barked, her eyes bloodshot. "When you go into that building, hand the money to the man with Melody. Do you hear me?"

Mom didn't even flinch from the pain; she only looked at Hope in confusion.

I gently pushed Hope's hands aside, placed the black bag filled with money in my mom's arms, and bent down to coax her softly.

"Mom, I want to eat an apple. Can you help me buy some? Go into that building, find the man with Melody, and buy from him. I like the apples he sells."

Recognition lit up in my mom's eyes. Her face broke into a wide smile, and she nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, yes, I will buy you apples, Hunter!"

She clutched the bag tightly as if holding the most precious treasure in the world.

Through my blurred vision, I stared at her face, weathered with wrinkles. For a moment, it felt unfamiliar.

Over the years, I saw so many things—studies, work, houses, cars, a wife, a daughter, and even friends and colleagues. But I never took a proper look at the woman who invested every ounce of her being into raising me selflessly.

What was I doing all these years?

The pain and guilt weighed down on me like an invisible mountain pressing on my shoulders and head, so heavy I couldn't lift them anymore.

Then, a dry, rough hand gently rested on the top of my head.