Desahan Dikamar Tamu

My husband, Michael Sawyer, thought I was refusing the offer, and his voice immediately shot up.

"Three thousand dollars isn't enough for you? Get this straight, Bianca. Your mother was just an unemployed nobody.

"The fact that her death could bring your family this much money is already more than you deserve. Don't push your luck!"

I shook my head. "You've got it wrong. What I mean is, this is money earned from your family member's death. Only you should be taking it."

He frowned deeply, disgust written all over his face. "Hey, this money came from selling your mother's corpse. What does that have to do with my family? You think I'm as heartless as you? You think I'd take blood money like this?"

Michael had grown up in a single-parent household. His father died young, and his mother, Martha Miller—rest her soul—had raised him all by herself.

To pay for his dream of becoming a lawyer, she worked several jobs a day until she ruined her health. He saw it all growing up, so he had always been exceptionally loving and protective toward her.

At first, I couldn't understand why Martha's death did nothing to Michael. He never even came home. Instead, he threw himself into defending Layla Atkinson, the driver responsible for the fatal car accident.

The last thing I could've expected was that he had mistaken my mother for the victim.

I looked at Michael and said seriously, "Listen up, Michael. I suggest you return those three thousand dollars and retrieve Mom's body. She didn't have it easy raising you."

I thought I had made myself clear enough, but he didn't grasp my meaning.

Instead, he snapped in irritation, "Are you sick in the head? Since when did your mom ever raise me? And what did you think a black market was? You can't just buy back something that's been sold whenever you want!

"Your mom's body has probably been chopped up by now. There's no way to retrieve it. Just take the money and quit the nonsense!"

Martha might not be my biological mother, but she had been killed for no reason, falsely accused of staging a crash-for-cash scam. Now, her son had sold off her remains to the black market to be dismembered.

The thought of everything she had suffered made my eyes burn red.

"If you know exactly what the black market is capable of, how could you bring yourself to sell Mom's body there to be butchered like that? Are you even human?"

Michael curled his lips into a cruel smile. "She's your mom, not mine. Why would I care? Besides, dead people can't feel pain. If her body could be sold on the black market, I'd say she still had some value.

"And whose fault was it for not watching where she was going? Getting herself hit by a car was bad enough. She even gave Layla nightmares for days afterward!"

Looking at how smug and self-righteous he was, I honestly couldn't imagine what kind of look he would have when he found out the victim was actually his very own mother.