Chapter 1

"Mercy Ryan! What are you doing!"

Daniel Shaw was the first to rush over, but I locked him outside the room.

He slammed against the door like a madman.

My mother knelt outside the glass wall and struck the door with all ten fingers. Blood quickly smeared across the glass.

"Mercy, that’s your father!

“He went into that fire to save you! He finally woke up, and you pulled the tube out?! Please, Mercy, I’m begging you. Put it back in!”

I did not move.

Three minutes earlier, my father opened his eyes, and everyone in the room burst into tears.

The first thing he saw was me, and he called me by my childhood nickname.

"Marshy."

He gave me that nickname the year I was born. Even my mother had not called me that in over a decade.

He remembered me falling into the river at seven and pulling me out.

He remembered me running away from home at twelve and searching for me all night at an abandoned train station.

He remembered our terrible argument before the fire, when I told him I would rather die in the flames than let him save me.

He remembered everything.

Everyone said Gordon Ryan really came back to them.

I cried too.

Then I asked him one question in a whisper beside his ear.

The moment he heard it, his eyes suddenly flew wide open.

The next second, I pulled out the tube.

The hospital room door finally burst open.

Daniel rushed in with the doctors and forced me onto the floor.

Someone grabbed me by the hair, someone else pinned down my hand, and the others desperately performed CPR on my father.

Once. Twice. Three times.

His body jerked up with every compression.

But the ECG still ended in a straight green line.

"Time of death: 4:07 p.m."

The doctor lowered the defibrillator.

My mother threw herself against the side of the bed, her sobs tearing out of her chest.

The hallway outside the room fell silent for a few seconds.

Then the first curse rang out.

"Murderer!"

"She killed her own father!"

"Gordon rushed into the fire to save her and was burned beyond recognition. How could she do this!"

"Why is a monster like her still alive? Why wasn’t she the one who died!"

When the police cuffed me, my mother rushed over and slapped me hard across the face.

My ears rang, and blood immediately seeped from the corner of my mouth.

Still unsatisfied, she slapped me a second time.

"Mercy."

Her eyes were red as she said each word clearly. "From this day forward, you are no longer my daughter."

I licked the blood from the corner of my mouth and looked toward the hospital bed.

A white sheet was slowly pulled over my father’s face.

Daniel glared at me. "Why?"

I smiled.

"Do you want to know? Then go check the security footage and see what I asked my father after he woke up."