A Mother's Final Portrait

Jessica's mother, a renowned police portrait artist, prioritizes her other daughter's celebration over a desperate plea for help. Dismissing her child's kidnapping as a cruel prank, she refuses to intervene, leading to Jessica's brutal death. When tasked with reconstructing a victim's face from remains, the mother is horrified to see her own daughter's features emerge. This modern horror mystery follows a woman's descent into guilt as she realizes her hatred cost her daughter's life.

Chapters

Chapter 4

Deign

I asked her the same question a long time ago. I was in Grade Nine, and studies were hard. My mother fell ill, and she needed thousands for her treatment. To lessen her burden, I traveled to a lot of cities and joined many competitions to win any cash prizes possible.

Then, I did nothing but go to school and the hospital to care for her. I lost so much weight back then. I nearly ran myself to the bone out of sheer exhaustion. My mother seemed to be moved, and she smiled at me for the first time in my life.

When we ran into our neighbors, she would praise me and call me a good girl. I would follow her around, carefully tugging on her sleeve. Still, I always had a smile on. It was a timid but blissful smile.

I thought I could touch my mother for the first time in my life. I thought my efforts could get her to love me, to be gentle to me. Everything seemed to be getting better, but then the afternoon came. Yvonne was holding her opened piggy bank.

She came up to me, crying like a hurt puppy. "I can understand that you're worried about Mom, Jessica. I don't mind giving you all my money, but you shouldn't have told Mom that you won them in your competitions!"

I jerked my head up and looked at my mother. Sunlight shone through the window and crept through the wrinkles on the edges of her eyes. A moment ago, there was warmth in her gaze, but it had changed. I was familiar with that gaze. It was the cold, cold look I'd gotten used to.

"No, Mom, I didn't take her money—"

I panicked and tried to defend myself, but the only answer I received was a loud, clear slap. My mother looked tense, and there it was again—the familiar distaste in her eyes.

"I knew you were a bad egg. I can't believe I have a daughter like you!" She stormed off, and I looked at Yvonne, tears in my eyes.

"Why'd you frame me?"

When Yvonne was certain that Mom had gotten into her room, she immediately dropped the act. Although the ten-year-old was smiling innocently, the words that came out of her mouth dripped with venom.

"You're nothing but a pitiful, unloved maggot. You think you can make Mom love you? In your dreams! Our brother died because of you. Our parents got a divorce because of you!" She looked at me, her teeth clenched.

"Jessica, you're nothing but an omen. You should never have existed!"

That night, I was swallowed whole by agony and helplessness. I grabbed my compass and stabbed my arm until it had holes in it. Not even the pain could relieve me of the despair and panic I felt.

Eventually, I went into my mother's bedroom and asked, "Mom, if you never loved me, why'd you give birth to me?"

Her eyes were closed, and she said nothing, but I knew she wasn't asleep. If she wouldn't deign to answer my question when she was alive, she had even less of a reason to do so now that I was dead. No one could hear the dead, not even my mother.

Continue to next part

Driven by a desire to save money, a tenant moves into a suspiciously inexpensive apartment despite knowing a previous resident died there. The thin walls of the building offer no privacy, forcing the protagonist to endure the unsettling sounds of a woman moaning in the adjacent unit every single night. However, the situation turns chilling when another neighbor reveals that the apartment next door is actually vacant, leaving the tenant to face a terrifying mystery.

Horror Modern Mystery

8.3

Fins of Farewell

8.3

Once a mermaid princess, the protagonist abandoned the ocean for Trevon Chapman, the man who rescued her from a fisherman’s cruelty. After five years of devotion, their marriage shatters when Trevon demands her tail to save his dying childhood sweetheart, Corinne. Despite her pleas, he forcibly subjects her to surgery, leaving her wheelchair-bound and broken. Labeled a monster by the man she loved, she demands a divorce. However, Trevon’s cruelty backfires when she regains her true form and escapes back to the depths, leaving him in a state of desperate, late-stage regret.

Action Fantasy Horror Modern Mystery Romance

9.3

His Political Lie, My Shattered Love

9.3

My husband, a rising political star, begged me to reconcile. I thought our love story was real. It was a lie, a public spectacle designed for his political gain and my systematic destruction. On our anniversary, I found a group chat on his tablet. He and his mistress were laughing about how predictable I was, calling me a "naive fool" for believing his promises. The cruelty escalated from there. He poisoned my food, publicly humiliated me at a charity auction that left me bankrupt, and even had me whipped in his family's basement as a twisted form of punishment. The final blow came when I overheard him plotting my murder. He planned a "tragic hiking accident" at a remote cliff during a storm, a perfect crime to make me disappear forever. But I turned his murder plot into my own escape. I faked my death and started over as a baker in a quiet town. A year later, he found me, haunted by regret, but his final act of redemption-and the true cost of my freedom-was something I never saw coming.

Horror Mystery Romance

8.5

Reborn Regret: I Stop Blocking Their Forever

8.5

After being strangled to death by his girlfriend Cherry, the protagonist wakes up on the day of his murder. In his past life, he tried to stop Cherry from receiving a blood transfusion from her childhood friend Neil, who carried HIV. His interference led to Neil’s accidental death and Cherry’s lethal revenge. Now reborn, he decides to step aside. As he watches the transfusion take place, he chooses his own survival over saving a woman who would rather believe a lie than his warning.

Action Horror Modern Mystery Romance Young Adult

7.6

Rejected Heiress: My Heartless Family's Regret

7.6

For seventeen years, I was the pride of the Carlisle family, the perfect daughter destined to inherit an empire. But that life ended the moment a DNA report slid across my father’s mahogany desk. The paper proved I was a stranger. Vanessa, the girl sobbing in the corner, was the real biological daughter they had been searching for. "You need to leave. Tonight. Before the press gets wind of this. Before the stock prices dip." My father’s voice was as cold as flint. My mother wouldn't even look at me, staring out the window at the gardens as if I were already a ghost. Just like that, I was erased. I left behind the Birkin bags and the diamonds, throwing my Centurion Card into a crystal bowl with a clatter that echoed like a gunshot. I walked out into the cold night and climbed into a rusted Ford Taurus driven by a man I had never met—my biological father. I went from a mansion to a fourth-floor walk-up in Queens that smelled of laundry detergent and struggle. My new siblings looked at me with a mix of fear and disgust, waiting for the "fallen princess" to break. They expected me to beg for my old life back, to crumble without the luxury I’d known since birth. But they didn't know the truth. I had spent years training in a shark tank, honing survival skills they couldn't imagine. While Richard Carlisle froze my trust funds to starve me out, my net worth was climbing by millions on an encrypted trading app. They thought they were throwing me to the wolves. They didn't realize they were just letting me off my leash. As the Carlisles prepared to debut Vanessa at the Manhattan Arts Gala, I was already making my move. "Get dressed. We're going to a party."

Billionaire Horror Modern

7.5

The Billionaire's Secret Obsession: She Is Mine

7.5

Julianna was drowning in a corporate warzone, fighting a massive department deficit while fending off her mother’s relentless matchmaking. Then, a ghost from her past returned to shatter her reality. Eight years ago, Aidan Caldwell walked out of her life without a word. Now, he was back in New York as a ruthless billionaire, and a pitch-black Maybach started stalking her in the dim underground garage. She had no idea the driver hiding behind the obsidian-tinted glass was Aidan. She didn't know he had just choked a confession out of an executive, discovering that her "betrayal" eight years ago was a complete lie. "Stay away from her. The rules are mine now." Aidan had warned his rivals, his sanity tearing at the seams as he watched from the shadows while a creepy coworker put an arm around her shoulder. He shattered glasses and crushed her favorite white flowers in his penthouse, driven by a lethal, obsessive jealousy seeing other men touch what belonged to him. Julianna was completely in the dark, feeling only a heavy, predatory stare pinning her to the cold concrete. When a sudden, heartbreaking scent of cedarwood rolled out of the cracked car window, her brain short-circuited. Why was this terrifying stranger stalking her in the shadows? Desperate to save her career, Julianna recklessly agreed to fake an engagement with a wealthy heir this weekend. But she had no idea Aidan had already rigged her company's crisis, and the predator was about to tear her world apart to claim her back.

Billionaire Horror Modern

A Mother's Final Portrait

Chapter 4

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