After Death Short Stories & Police Family Emotions Novels

My father was a hero cop, but I was a blemish to his shining resume as I was a delinquent who smoked, drank, and got into fights. Every time I tried to visit him at the precinct, he would slap me and tell me to leave in front of his colleagues. His fatherly love was all meant for Nana Smith, the daughter of his fallen comrade who was a paragon of good character and academic excellence. When Nana was kidnapped, he sent the entire city's officers after the kidnappers. When I was stabbed three times by some thugs and called him for help, he snapped at me, "Quit being a bother. The death of vermin like you is simply good riddance anyway." Even as I suffocated in agony, I lay in a pool of my own blood and sent him one last text. [Father, would you finally look at me twice if I end up a corpse?] He never replied. Then, three days later, the cops destroyed a major cartel hideout when my father found me, still holding on to evidence I had gathered against the cartel. That was when the madness started…

When the murderer tortures me to death, my criminal investigator dad and chief forensic pathologist mom are cheering at my brother's match. The criminal saws off my tongue. He answers my Dad's call with my finger. Just before the call ends, Dad's cold voice cuts through. "Playing dead, huh? We should never have brought him back." The murderer chuckles mockingly. "Looks like I grabbed the wrong kid. I thought they'd care more about their real son." When Mom and Dad arrive at the crime scene later, they stare at the mutilated body in shock and rage at the murderer's cruelty. But they never realize that the broken, bloodied body is their biological son.

The night I was kidnapped, I made one last phone call to my dad, police captain Marcus Harper. "Dad, save me!" "Grace, even your jealous tantrums should have better timing." On the other end of the line, he was celebrating his adopted daughter's birthday. His voice dripped with impatience. "Today is Annie's eighteenth birthday. Pushing her down the stairs wasn't enough for you? Now you have to lie and make a scene too?" I cried and told him I hadn't done it. All I got in return was a dismissive chuckle. "Grace, either come home right now and apologize to Annie, or don't ever come back." I never made it back. Three months later, a girl's body was unearthed at an abandoned slaughterhouse on the edge of the city. Dad led the team to the scene. He pulled back the blue tarp covering the body and saw the red cord around my wristbone, the one with "Stay Safe" engraved on its silver tag. The man who had saved countless missing children finally lost his mind.