My father hates my mother for ruining his chance with his first love, and his hatred spills onto me, the unwanted child who carries her blood.

I'm 18 when I'm kidnapped. The abductor calls Dad, who is a police officer, and threatens him. Dad thinks I staged the whole thing myself and tells the man to slice me apart if he wants to.

The abductor tortures me to death. He even cuts my body into pieces and feeds it to the fish.

Only then does Dad lose his mind. He tracks down the abductor and hacks him to death.

I was kidnapped by one of my father's enemies.

The abductor called Dad, who was a police officer, and growled into the phone, "Mr. Carter, your daughter is with me. If you want her alive, you have to come here yourself. Otherwise, I'll cut her into pieces."

A cold blade touched my throat, making a chill run through me.

Dad's voice came through the receiver, steady and irritated. "Playing the kidnapping trick again, huh, Edith? You're absolutely hopeless."

"I'm not lying! I swear I'm not!" My voice cracked as I begged, "He really will kill me!"

"Then why don't you just die?"

As he cursed me, my breath faltered.

"Dad," I choked out, "I'm only 18. I don't want to die. Please…. please save me."

Yet Dad hung up.

I stared blankly, listening to the busy tone as tears slid down my cheeks, colder than the knife at my throat.

The abductor cursed, redialed, and barked, "William Carter! You really don't care if I kill her?"

"Go ahead and kill her!" Dad snapped, his voice dripping with fury. "Forget cutting her into pieces—carve her up and destroy her however you like. It has nothing to do with me."

The line went dead again. Right before the call ended, I heard faint music in the background along with the voices of my stepmother, Agnes Rowley, and my younger half-sister, Helen Carter.

Today was Helen's birthday. They were probably celebrating together.

The abductor tried again, but Dad's phone was turned off. He hurled the device at the wall.

I didn't know what came over me, but suddenly, laughter slipped out of me.

The abductor slapped me hard. "What are you laughing at, you filthy bitch?"

Tears streamed down my face even as I laughed, unable to hold back.

"I'm laughing because you took the wrong person. Why would he care about me? I mean less to him than even a bug. He only cares about Helen."

My laugh broke into a sob. I looked up at him and pleaded, "I'm worthless to him. Keeping me here won't get you anything. Let me go. I can pay you. I'll give you a lot of money. I—ah!"

The knife stabbed into my abdomen. Pain surged through me as a scream ripped out of me.

The man smiled, twisted and delighted.

"William doesn't even want you. What makes you think you still deserve to live? I should send you off early. No, that's too easy. I'll take my time and make you repay his debt."

From that moment, my life was hell. The man tortured me until I finally died.

I thought I was about to be free at last.

Perhaps this was what Dad had wanted all along. He had spent years telling me to hurry up and die. Now I was really dying, just as he wished.

The last thing I heard was the abductor's warped whisper. "Remember this. I'm not the one who killed you. It was your beloved father. I'll carve out your heart and send it to him."

And so, I died at the hands of that vicious abductor.

He didn't stop at killing me. He hacked apart what was left of my body and cut out my heart before placing it inside a beautifully wrapped box.

I watched him work with calm precision. The scene felt strange and distant now that I was no longer flesh and blood.

I had become a drifting soul—and souls couldn't feel the heat or the cold. They couldn't grow tired, nor could they feel pain.

Before sunrise, the abductor carried the gift box to my family's doorstep and muttered, "William, I don't believe you can remain indifferent once you see your daughter's heart."

I found myself laughing again. The man was delusional. He had missed his chance. Dad would never care. If I had mattered to him even a little, he would have believed me.

Almost 20 years ago, Mom was so blindly in love with Dad that she used whatever methods she could to get close to him.

She ended up pregnant and forced Dad to marry her. Dad couldn't marry the woman he truly loved, and for that, he hated Mom. As for me, the child born from that trap, he despised me most of all.

Dad had never cared about me, not even once in my entire life. If he had, how could he have let me die the way I did, with my body destroyed beyond recognition?

Still, I was curious what expression he would make when he saw the so-called gift.

The door opened. Helen stepped outside cheerfully and walked back in with the gift box.

A moment later, screams and furious shouting erupted inside the house.

I drifted through the doorway and saw the overturned box on the floor and my heart rolling across the floor.

Dad was shaking with rage as he grabbed his phone and sent a voice message.

"Edith, are you insane? It's Helen's birthday. Not only did you refuse to come home to celebrate it, but you even sent something so disgusting to scare her. I should have killed you when you were born. You're such a monster!"

I lowered my head and floated over my heart. Crouching above it, I touched it lightly.

My translucent fingers passed right through the dark, bloodied flesh. There was no warmth. It had been too long since it had been taken out of my body, so even if I were able to feel something, my heart would no longer carry my warmth.

I looked up at Dad's hysterical expression, wishing I could speak to him.

"Dad, it isn't something disgusting. It's my heart. Just because it frightened Helen, you hate it this much?"

He couldn't hear me. He was making another call and barking into the phone, "Edith is suspected of threatening and harassing my daughter. Arrest her immediately."

Whoever answered the call must have questioned him, because he grew even more agitated.

"She's not my daughter. She's a bastard!"

I remembered the first time he called me that. It was ten years ago. Mom was gravely ill. She lay in bed coughing blood, and I begged Dad to send her to a hospital.

But Dad's true love, Agnes, stopped me. She was heavily pregnant by then.

For some reason I still didn't understand, she fell down the stairs.

There was so much blood back then—more than I had ever seen. The sight left me so stunned that I fainted.

When I woke up, I was shoved into a closet and locked in.

Whenever I made a mistake, that was always my punishment.

I didn't know what I had done wrong. I pounded the door, crying, "Dad, let me out. I'm scared! It's so dark. Please let me out!"

No one answered.

I stayed in that cramped, suffocating space for so long that I thought I might die there.

At last, the door was yanked open. Dad stood outside with a cold, disgusted look on his face as he stared at me. It was as though he were looking at trash.

His voice was icy. "Do you admit what you did wrong?"

"I-I don't know," I stammered, shaking my head. "Dad, I didn't do anything bad. Please believe me. I didn't push Ms. Rowley. She fell on her own."

The way I addressed her seemed to hit a nerve. Dad's gaze sharpened, and he raised his hand and struck me hard across the face.

"Bastard! You still won't admit it. Agnes almost died because of you. If anything had happened to her, I would have made you pay with your life."

The slap left my ears ringing. His voice blurred into a faint hum as I stared at him, watching his mouth open and close, his face twisted into a grotesque shape that continued to haunt me for years afterward.

It surfaced again now, clear and sharp in my mind.

Dad ended the call abruptly and glanced again at the bloody heart on the floor. His brow furrowed.

I followed his gaze. The heart no longer even looked like a heart.

The surface was coated with bits of something shiny, probably scraps of confetti left over from Helen's birthday celebration. The housekeepers hadn't cleaned up yet.

Dad's eyes hardened. He kicked the mangled organ with all his strength. It tumbled out the open door and bounced down the steps.

I rushed after it, trying desperately to catch it, but my hands passed straight through as I followed its path. I watched helplessly as it landed in the dirt like a discarded piece of trash.

I knelt beside it with care, staring at the filthy, ruined mass. I supposed I should have been heartbroken.

I was only a wandering soul now and couldn't feel sorrow. Yet when I wiped at my face, something strange happened. Tears slid down my cheeks.

Why could a soul cry?

A ringtone sounded from inside the house. I turned toward Dad as he frowned and answered the call.

Perhaps souls could hear too well, because I caught every word from the other end of the line.

It was a young woman, Beatrice Nolan—my best friend.

"Mr. Carter, Edith is missing. I can't reach her no matter what I try. Could you please help me look for her?"

"Don't play the same trick twice," Dad said, forcing his temper down, though his tone was cold.

"Beatrice, for your father's sake, I won't hold this against you. But you'd better stop being friends with someone like Edith. And don't contact me about anything involving her."

He hung up while she was still speaking, refusing to listen, just as he had always refused to listen to me.

I drifted in front of him, staring at the expression of pure disgust on his face. How could he hate me so much?

"Mr. Carter, something's happened." A young officer rushed into the room, panting. "Your phone was off, so we couldn't reach you. They pulled a woman's body from the moat last night. She had Edith's phone and wallet on her."

I saw Dad's eyes shift in an instant. For a moment, he seemed tense.

Was he actually worried about me?

When I was very young, he had cared a little.

I remembered being five years old. Mom had argued with Dad for a long time that day.

She begged through tears, "I made the mistake, but Edith has nothing to do with it. She's your child. She longs for your love. Please, just love her a little."

But not long after, Agnes moved into our home.

Once she arrived, she and Dad looked more like a married couple than my parents ever had. They kissed and embraced in front of Mom, who stood there silently as though she were an outsider in her own home.

I knew she was heartbroken. I heard her cry every night.

For a while, Dad tried to be good to me. After work, he would play games with me. If I got sick, he would check on me.

That ended the moment Agnes became pregnant.

Dad stopped coming to my room after work and spent his evenings locked in the bedroom with her, laughing.

He stopped reading me bedtime stories and instead carefully caressed Agnes' belly, saying he was reading to Helen.

He stopped smiling at me and began shouting, calling me awful names.

Then Agnes fell down the stairs, and Helen was born prematurely. Dad blamed everything on me.

He said I was jealous of the baby and had pushed Agnes. He accused me of trying to kill both of them.

Nothing I said mattered. He didn't believe me and struck me for the first time in my life.

The memories flickered past like a slide show until his face dissolved, replaced by the straight-backed figure walking ahead of me.

Without realizing it, I had followed him all the way to the moat. Police officers had gathered around. Several of them were familiar faces.

Samuel Porter saw Dad approach and hurried over, concern etched across his face.

"Mr. Carter, the DNA results aren't back yet, but judging from the build, it probably isn't Edith. Please don't worry."

As I stood behind Dad, I saw his hand tighten into a fist. His response stunned everyone nearby.

"Do you not understand proper reporting protocol?" His voice was icy and detached. "Copy the operations manual ten times. Then make a new report."

Startled, Samuel blinked and then straightened up. "Yes, sir. Preliminary assessment shows that the victim has been dead for more than 24 hours. Her face is ruined and unrecognizable. DNA comparison is in progress."