All Chapters of The Beast Hunt: My Family Made Me the Sacrifice: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

Chapter 1

"Do not worry, son. Charlotte had been a criminal attorney for ten years and she had never lost a case. She would put those animals behind bars for the rest of their lives."Mom stared at me on the hospital bed, at the barely recognizable shape of what remained of my body. Tears rolled down her face in heavy drops.Dad's eyes were bloodshot. His fists clenched so hard his knuckles cracked. "Find them. Turn over every stone if you have to. I will grind their bones to dust.""I cannot take this case." Charlotte Clayborne, my girlfriend of ten years and a practicing attorney, finally spoke.Mom's head snapped up. "Charlotte? What did you just say? Carrick is your fiancé. Look at what they did to him.""That was exactly why I had to recuse myself."Besides, the litigation would require Carrick to relive and recount every detail of what happened to him over and over. For him, that would be like ripping the wounds open again and again. It would not help his recovery."My parents excha

Chapter 2

The post was still on the front page. New replies kept crawling up like snakes.An account named CedricSelwyn_Official wrote, [Some people really do not know their place. He spent 20 years out there as a nobody, dirt-poor and reeking of failure, and now he thinks he can walk back in and take everything that belongs to me. As if he deserves any of it.[But that lawyer girlfriend he had been with for ten years? She was even easier to handle than I expected.[All I had to do was shed a few tears in front of her and tell her how scared I was now that my "brother" was back, how it felt like everything I had was about to be taken away. Then I casually mentioned that if he insisted on pressing charges and turned it into a media circus, would that hurt her career? Would that drag the Selwyn name through the mud?[Guess what? She got it right away. She went straight to him and said she could not take his case because of conflict of interest. Behind the scenes, she did everything she could t

Chapter 3

Before consciousness slipped into darkness, I gathered that faint warmth and tucked it into the deepest part of my chest, guarding it with everything I had left.I stayed under until muffled voices drifted to the edge of my hearing."Cedric's friends are here. They say they want to visit Carrick and help him shake off the bad luck.""Shake off the bad luck? What kind of thing is that to say?" Mom's voice cut in, sharp and panicked."Charlotte, Carrick cannot handle any more. Do not let them in.""They have already seen the video. It is all over the internet. There is no hiding it. Carrick is going to have to face them sooner or later."Mom fell silent, then let out a long breath. "Maybe you are right."I heard something inside my chest crumble to dust.The footsteps and laughter outside the door grew closer."You guys bring everything? Let us see what this whole Beast Hunt felt like in person.""Relax. Firecrackers, bottle rockets, cherry bombs. We have plenty. We are giving

Chapter 4

They gave the nurse a few hurried instructions and left the room together.The ward fell silent again, dead and still.I lay there, and that faint warmth their tears and promises had pressed into me tore at something inside my chest, pulling in opposite directions.They had stood by and done nothing while those rich kids tortured me a second time. Yet now they rushed out to find medicine for me, willing to spare no expense.What was I supposed to believe? The way Mom had looked at my wounds and cried? The way Dad had sworn with red-rimmed eyes that he would make them pay? Or the post?Blood ties. A family that had searched for 20 years to bring me home. Could even that be a lie?Charlotte's betrayal had driven a knife straight through my heart. If ten years of I love you from her had all been a performance, then who was left to trust?Yet I was like a drowning man who had spotted a piece of driftwood, ready to claw at it with everything I had, even if the wood was rotting, even

Chapter 5

I hung up. The phone rang again almost immediately."Mr. Selwyn, what you just said... that was just anger talking, right? After all, the deceased were your biological parents. Per standard procedure, we still needed you to come in and sign off, handle the remains, and the arrangements.""I was not speaking out of anger." My voice came out so calm it sounded foreign, even to me."Contact the funeral home directly and have them cremated.""That... that was not exactly...""Then process it as an accidental death with no next of kin." I cut him off. "Consider it the last thing I ever did for them."The man on the other end was clearly at a loss. After a long pause, he managed, "We... we would need a signed authorization from the immediate family. At the very least...""Could I do it electronically? I could record a video authorization right now."There was another silence. Then, with obvious discomfort, he said, "We will handle it per your request. The authorization documents will

Chapter 6

Sure enough, Charlotte's brow furrowed even deeper, and the look she gave me was laced with displeasure and reproach.There it was. That was their game.One of them was always innocent. The other was always soft-hearted. And my pain, my questions, were always immature and blowing things out of proportion."Cedric, you always said I was in your way. Now was your chance. An urn was a lot easier to carry around than a living person. Take it with you and have your happy little family reunion wherever you pleased.""You..." Cedric seized on that like he had been waiting for it, his voice rising to a shrill pitch."I knew it. You wanted Mom and Dad dead so you could swallow up the entire Selwyn fortune. You had been back for what, a few days? And you were already scheming."I knew it. You spent 20 years as a nobody out there and now you showed up acting like an animal. You were nothing but a stray they dragged in off the street."Charlotte's brow tightened as well. "Carrick, right now

Chapter 7

The gauze scraped against my wounds and I hissed through my teeth from the pain."Charlotte, funny how conflict of interest did not seem to apply right now. You really thought this was appropriate?"Charlotte's hand froze in midair. Her face flushed, then went pale. "I... I was here as your fiancée...""My fiancée?" I tugged at the corner of my mouth. "A fiancée who cited conflict of interest when her man was being tortured, yet jumped right in to help force a pen into his hand when he was being pushed to give up his inheritance? You really did switch roles fast.""Carrick Selwyn. We could do this the easy way or the hard way." Cedric dropped all pretense. He snatched a pen off the table with one hand and reached for my arm with the other, ready to drag it by force."You were signing this today whether you wanted to or not."Charlotte hesitated for a moment, then actually stepped forward as well, murmuring, "Carrick, stop fighting it. Just sign. It was better for everyone."I wa

Chapter 8

Charlotte's face was white. Her lips moved, yet she did not act.She knew Edmund. He was a legend from the old guard of the top-tier law firms, and even in retirement, his influence in the legal world ran deep.More importantly, the two attorneys standing behind him both outranked her by decades."Mr. Selwyn, this will had been jointly certified by three notary witnesses. All notarization documents, video recordings, and handwriting verification reports were right here. If there were objections, you were welcome to request a forensic examination through the courts."Additionally, we obtained preliminary evidence that Mr. Warren Selwyn and Mrs. Patricia Ashworth spent the past five years illegally transferring Selwyn Corp assets into Cedric Selwyn's name through fraudulent contracts and related-party transactions."The total amount exceeded 80 million dollars. All relevant materials had already been forwarded to the financial crimes division."Cedric stood there with his mouth han

Chapter 9

I finished her sentence for her.Patricia's sobbing caught in her throat. Warren stepped forward as well, trying to summon some fatherly authority."Carrick, how could you say that? We just... we just wanted to get that medicine for you. There was an accident on the way. Everything we did was out of love.""Love?" I pointed at the inheritance renunciation papers still in Cedric's hand, the ones he had not had time to put away."Staging a fake death on one end so you could take him to Valterre for a family vacation, while sending him here to force me into signing away my inheritance on the other. Mom, Dad, you really did think of everything, did you not?"Warren and Patricia's faces collapsed completely.They clearly had not expected their carefully planned death scheme to be thrown out into the open like this."Carrick, you got it wrong..." Patricia reached for my hand, yet I pulled away. "We only wanted to step away for a while, give you and Cedric some space to cool down..."

Chapter 10

Within a week, the corporation completed a full restructuring of its leadership.Within a month, Selwyn Corp's stock price stabilized and began to recover.Within three months, the court delivered its first-instance verdict.Warren and Patricia, as the masterminds behind the New Year's Eve Beast Hunt livestream, were convicted on multiple charges including intentional bodily harm, unlawful imprisonment, and orchestrating an act of extreme violence for public broadcast.Warren received 12 years. Patricia received ten.The 80 million dollars they had funneled into Cedric's name was recovered in full and returned to Selwyn Corp.From the defendant's stand, Patricia screamed my name through her tears, saying she knew what she had done was wrong, begging me to write a statement of clemency for the sake of whatever bond still existed between a mother and her son.Warren's face was the color of ash. He kept murmuring the same thing over and over. "We only wanted to make Cedric happy. W

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP