When the neighborhood watch issued a string of crime alerts, my mother went into a frantic tailspin, desperate to set up a duress code for my older sister. Her face was pinched with worry as she cupped Brook’s hands. "You’re deadly allergic to mangoes, baby. If you’re ever in trouble, just text or call and say: "Mom, I’m craving mangoes." The second I hear that, I’ll know someone has a gun to your head." Only then did she notice me standing in the doorway. Her expression flattened into immediate irritation. "You want one too? Fine. What are you allergic to again?" "Peaches," I answered quietly. She waved a dismissive hand, not even looking up from Brook’s manicured fingers. "Whatever. Yours is "I’m craving peaches." Don’t make it complicated." Three days later, Brook posted a photo of her fresh acrylics on Instagram. Mom commented within five seconds: "Gorgeous! My sweet girl has the hands of a model." Then, out of nowhere, Mom bolted upright from the sofa, knocking over her coffee mug. She scrambled toward the front door in a blind panic. "Call 911! Something’s wrong with Brook!" she shrieked, clutching her chest. "Her safeword is mango. Mangoes are bright yellow. Her nails in that picture are canary yellow! She’s sending an SOS!" She dragged three squad cars and two paramedics to the nail salon, making a hysterical scene in the middle of downtown—only to find Brook sipping an iced matcha, entirely unharmed. A week later, a serrated blade was pressed against the hollow of my throat. My hands shook so violently I could barely unlock my phone. With the cold steel digging into my skin, I called my mother, tears streaming silently down my cheeks. When she picked up, her voice was thick with annoyance over the hum of background noise. "What do you mean, you want peaches?" she snapped. "It’s past midnight, Camille. Who the hell goes hunting for fruit in the middle of the night? Eat, eat, eat—is that all your empty head ever thinks about?" The line went dead. Staring at the darkened screen, I closed my eyes, and every last ember of hope inside me turned to ash. ... 1 They say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die. Mine didn't feel like a movie. It felt like a cruel, pathetic joke. I should have known better. That one phone call—the only lifeline I was permitted—should have gone straight to 911, not to the woman who gave birth to me. I shouldn't have pinched every penny just to wire Mom a monthly "filial allowance," forcing myself to rent a roach-infested studio in a derelict walk-up with broken locks and dark hallways. And above all, I never should have harbored the childish fantasy that Mom would come tearing through the night to save me the way she had for Brook. "What are you crying for?" The man holding the knife was trembling, his chest heaving with manic rage. The serrated edge wobbled against my windpipe. "You think you’re the victim here? "I’m" the one who lost everything!" Terror paralyzed my limbs. Pure primal instinct took over, and I choked out a desperate plea. "Please… please don’t do this. Whatever you want—I have savings. Take everything. Just let me live." His knuckles whitened around the hilt. A sharp pinch of pain bloomed on my neck as the blade broke the surface of my skin. He let out a jagged, bitter laugh. "What, you’re finally offering to give back the money you swindled from me?" I blinked through my tears, dazed. "What… what money? I don’t know what you’re talking about!" That sent him over the edge. "You’re still playing dumb? You sought me out online! You reeled me in, made me fall for you, promised me a future!" Spit flew from his lips. "For four straight months, I poured every dime of my life savings into your accounts! Whatever you asked for, I sent. And then you ghosted me. Blocked my number. Vanished into thin air." His eyes were bloodshot, swimming with fury. "A narcissistic, money-grubbing sociopath like you deserves to burn in hell!" In his frenzy, he dropped the knife. His hands shot forward, locking around my throat with crushing force. The world tilted. Black spots danced across my vision as air was violently severed from my lungs. Yet, in that suffocating darkness, a bizarre clarity struck me. I had never seen this man in my life. I had never done online dating. And not a single soul—least of all my parents—had ever handed me a cent. I clawed at his wrists, kicking furiously against the floorboards. I refused to die as a scapegoat for a crime I didn't commit. Summoning every ounce of adrenaline left in my fading body, I wrenched his thumbs backward and gasped, "It… wasn’t… me! It wasn't me!" He leaned down, his face inches from mine, his sneer dripping with venom. "Choking you out is too merciful. You deserve to suffer every second of your death." I slumped against the baseboard, drawing in jagged, burning breaths of air. "I swear to God, I never talked to you! I don’t even know your name!" "Still lying through your teeth?" He yanked out his phone, shoving the screen into my face. "Look at these chats! Look at the selfies! You're going to sit there and tell me this isn't your face?" I stared at the screen. Endless digital payment receipts scrolled past—totaling at least eighty thousand dollars. Interspersed between the transactions were sickeningly explicit messages, where he lovingly addressed the recipient as "Camille". My real name is Camille. My mouth opened to shout that someone had stolen my identity, that someone had catfished him with my pictures. Then the words froze in my throat. The blood in my veins turned to ice. Those photos… I had never posted them anywhere on the internet. I had never sent them to a single soul. Except one person. 2 A wave of violent nausea rose in my chest. Three months ago, several packages addressed to my sister, Brook, were delivered to my dingy apartment by mistake. When I called her, she was unusually sweet—a rarity that should have set off every alarm bell in my head. "Oh, Camille, why don’t you just try them on for me?" she had purred over the line. "We’re roughly the same size anyway. Take a few flattering pictures in them so I can see the fit. If they look cheap, you can just return them at the drop-off box down your street. Saves you a trip out to the suburbs." Two years ago, when our parents sold our childhood home to buy a luxury townhouse, they deliberately picked a unit right across the street from Brook’s office. They never once asked about my commute. My job was twenty miles away on the opposite end of the city, leaving me stranded in this dangerous, neglected neighborhood because it was the only rent I could afford. The clothes Brook had ordered were provocative: skintight, plunging minidresses made of cheap velvet and sheer mesh. When I texted her the try-on photos, I had added a frantic disclaimer: "Brook, delete these the second you look at them. Please don’t save them or show anyone." Her response had been dripping with condescension: "Relax. Who would want to keep photos of you anyway? You’re just taking up storage on my cloud." My prolonged silence broke the intruder’s patience. He grabbed a fistful of my hair, wrenching my head back. "You could have just dumped me like a normal human being! But no—you had to brag about sleeping with other guys! You gave me this exact address, daring me to come find you. You wanted to rub it in my face that I’m nothing but a pathetic loser!" His voice cracked, a terrifying spark of madness burning in his eyes. Everything clicked into place. The cruelty was so deliberate, so intricately designed, that it stole the breath right out of my lungs. Brook hadn't just used me as a digital shield. She had handed him the map, the key, and the motive. She wanted me dead. With nothing left to lose, I looked straight into his eyes. "Someone catfished you using my identity. It was my sister—Brook!" "I took those exact photos for her and sent them to her private number. Nobody else had access to them! I can prove it to you!" He froze. He studied my tear-streaked face for several long seconds, his jaw twitching, before picking up the knife and resting the blade flat against my collarbone. "Go on then," he said, his tone dead and hollow. "Prove it before I slit your throat." My hands shook violently as I dialed Brook’s number. It rang out. Once. Five times. Twelve times. Straight to voicemail. Before he could lose his temper, I frantically dialed my mother. The ringing tone buzzed against my ear, each beat pounding like a hammer against my skull. A tiny, foolish ember of hope flickered in the dark recesses of my mind. "What if she’s already on her way? What if her dismissal earlier was just an act to throw off an attacker listening in?" The line clicked open. "Are you seriously still whining about your damn peaches?" Mom’s voice was sharp, loaded with pure venom. "Because of your stupid prank call earlier, I just lost a fifty-dollar hand at bridge! Your grandmother was right about you from day one—you’re a miserable, bad-luck curse on this family!" The background clatter of poker chips and laughter shattered my final delusion. She was sitting comfortably in her weekly card group. I swallowed down the bile in my throat, forcing my voice to stay level. "Mom… do you remember a few months ago? When Brook had me try on those dresses for her and take photos?" The day I dropped off those returns, Mom and Brook had been sitting in the kitchen, casually scrolling through the pictures on Brook's iPad. Mom had tapped the screen with a manicured nail, chuckling cruelly: "Look at that. When you wear something like this, Brook, it looks like high-fashion runway. When Camille puts it on, she looks like she works the corner under a streetlamp." They had shared a mean, conspiratorial laugh. Brook had cast me a faux-apologetic look: "Oh, Camille, Mom’s just teasing. You know you shouldn’t take everything so seriously." I had swallowed the humiliation in silence. Even now, I couldn't comprehend how a mother could look at her own flesh and blood and utter something so dehumanizing. Over the speaker, Mom paused for a beat. "Those trashy photos? Yeah, I remember." "Why are you dragging your sister into this?" she continued coldly. "Didn’t you buy those tacky rags for yourself to show off?" My breath hitched. "Mom… what are you saying? You know Brook ordered them—" "Enough!" she snapped. "I’m in the middle of a winning streak and I don’t have time for your pathetic drama." She hung up. I dropped my hands, tears spilling silently over my cheeks as I looked up at the stranger standing over me. "It wasn't me… I swear to God, it wasn't me." He leveled the blade against my throat, his eyes devoid of warmth. "Say your last words." 3 Panic raced through my veins, setting every nerve on fire. "Wait! Please, just give me one more minute!" I wracked my brain, searching through every scrap of memory, every dinner table conversation from the past six months. "I’m innocent, I swear on my life!" I sobbed, pressing my palms together in front of him. "You don’t want to murder the wrong person. You don’t want the real scammer walking free while you spend the rest of your life in prison for killing a nobody!" He didn't move. But he didn't strike, either. After what felt like an eternity, he shoved the phone back into my trembling hands. I dialed my father. "Dad… Dad, it’s Camille," I rushed out the moment he picked up, trying to keep the terror out of my voice. "Do you remember a few weeks ago, when Brook was bragging about having eighty thousand dollars in her savings account? You asked her how she made that much money on an entry-level salary. Do you remember?" Brook earned barely thirty thousand a year, yet our parents supplemented her with a two-thousand-dollar monthly allowance, which she still managed to blow through on designer bags. When she had flashed her account balance at the dinner table that night, Dad had nearly choked on his steak: "Where the hell did you get that kind of cash?" Brook had tilted her chin up with smug satisfaction: "My online boyfriend wired it to me. See? Your favorite daughter knows how to handle men." I had felt uneasy back then, quietly murmuring that taking that much money from someone without meeting them felt wrong. Dad had immediately cut me off with a booming laugh: "Smart girl! That’s my Brook. You’ve got charm and brains. Not like your sister over there—wooden, stubborn, useless. Her boss invites her to a networking dinner and she acts like a prude. No wonder she’s stuck at the bottom of the ladder!" He had sneered at me from across the table, choking off whatever warning I wanted to give. Now, crouching on the cold floor, I gripped the phone like a lifeline. "Dad, please tell me you remember that!" Dad sighed on the other end, his voice thick with sleep. "Yeah. I remember." A tiny ray of light broke through the terror in my chest. I looked up at the man with the knife. Before I could speak, Dad’s voice droned on through the speaker: "But that eighty grand was "yours", wasn't it, Camille? You told us your internet boyfriend sent it to you. What does any of that have to do with your sister?" The room seemed to drop into subzero temperatures. "Dad… what… what are you saying?" "Look, Camille," he muttered with heavy, patronizing weariness. "I’ve told you before: a respectable girl doesn't milk a man for his life savings unless there's a ring on her finger. What you did is shameful. Don't go dragging your sister's clean name through the mud just to clear your conscience." He let out a long yawn. "I’m exhausted. Don't call this late again." The call disconnected. My hand went limp, the phone clattering to the floorboards. I sat there on the grime-stained linoleum, utterly gutted. A storm of grief, fury, and sheer disbelief tore through my chest, building until it felt like my ribs would fracture from the pressure. I dug my nails into my scalp and opened my mouth, a raw, primal scream tearing out of my throat. "Shut up!" The man lunged forward, grabbing my shoulder. "What other lies are you going to spin?" "In our messages, you told me your parents adored you more than anything in the world! You said they’d never let anyone hurt you. Why would your own mother and father lie to frame you?" He thrust the glowing screen in front of my face again. I couldn't stop the tears. I was shaking so hard my teeth clattered. When he raised the knife once more, something inside me snapped. A sudden, feral burst of survival instinct surged through my limbs. I struck his wrist with all my might, knocking his arm aside, and scrambled on hands and knees toward the rickety dresser across the room. I yanked open the drawer, tearing through papers until I found my official medical records, thrusting the crumpled clinic sheet toward his chest. "Look at it!" I screamed, my voice cracking. "Look! I have a severe, documented allergy to peaches!" "In your chat logs, when you asked what I was doing, the girl told you she was eating fresh peach cobbler! I would go into anaphylactic shock if I touched a peach!" "I only have one phone number, one social media account! The account you were talking to isn't mine! We can call the carrier right now, we can check the IP address, we can—" The man slowly stepped toward me, the knife steady in his grip. He didn't care. He had come here tonight with enough rage to burn down a city, and he simply needed a body named Camille to pay for his ruined life. Sitting on the floor, surrounded by the wreckage of my family's betrayal, a sudden, heavy exhaustion settled over my bones. The fight drained out of me like water through a sieve. I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. "Just do it," I whispered, my voice barely audible. "Kill me." "There’s really nothing left for me here anyway." 4 The fatal blow never came. After several seconds of absolute silence, I opened my eyes. The man was looking down at me, the murderous frenzy in his eyes replaced by something far more unsettling: pity. The rigid tension in his shoulders had completely collapsed. "I thought my life was a disaster," he murmured, his voice rough. "I didn't realize yours was a living hell." He lowered the knife. "Your own parents are trying to feed you to the wolves." I didn't let down my guard. I stayed pressed against the wall, breathing shallowly. "You… you believe me?" He gave a slow nod. "A burner account can be faked," he said quietly. "A medical chart can be forged. But your voice… it’s wrong." "The voice notes she sent me were higher, sweeter. More practiced. That wasn't you." I stared at him, stunned. "You knew from the start? You were testing me?" He didn't answer directly. "And there’s something else." He looked into my eyes, his gaze piercing. "You can’t fake that look. The sheer, blinding agony of someone being betrayed by their own blood—unless you’re an Oscar-winning actress, nobody can manufacture that kind of grief." He let out a dry, self-deprecating breath. "Besides… the girl who took my money constantly bragged about how precious she was to her family. But on those calls? Your mother and father treated you like garbage they couldn't wait to throw out. No parent talks to a child they love like that." The validation hit me like a physical blow. The dam broke, and I buried my face in my hands, sobbing so violently that my entire body shook. After a long time, I wiped my eyes and looked up at the stranger still standing in my living room. "Now that you know the truth… what are you going to do?" His jaw clenched, a dangerous edge creeping back into his voice. "I’m not going to hurt you. But this isn't over." Before I could ask what he meant, he stepped forward and guided me firmly into the wooden kitchen chair. He pulled a length of soft nylon rope from his jacket and bound my wrists loosely to the back of the seat—firm enough to look convincing, but loose enough that I could slip out with a twist of my wrists. Then, he unlocked his phone and initiated a FaceTime call to my mother. "I have your daughter," he said into the camera, his voice cold and menacing. "Wire eighty thousand dollars to this account within seventy-two hours, or I’ll bury her in a ditch." By now, Mom was back in her suburban living room. Brook’s perfectly styled face pushed directly into the frame, showing zero fear that the man might recognize her voice. "Mom, look!" Brook gasped with exaggerated horror, pressing her palm against her cheek. "Camille’s actually tied up! Eighty thousand dollars… Mom, what are we going to do? Should we give it to him?" Mom didn't even blink. She let out a loud, mocking scoff. "Are you blind, Brook? Your sister has been throwing tantrums all night trying to get attention. She clearly hired some cheap street actor to stage a little theater for us!" Brook widened her eyes in faux realization. "Wait… you don't think… remember how she mentioned she conned some poor guy out of eighty grand last month?" Brook shook her head, clicking her tongue with righteous indignation. "The guy probably tracked her down, and since she already blew through all that cash on designer clothes, she’s trying to scam Mom and Dad’s retirement fund to pay him off!" She turned toward the camera, her tone dripping with sanctimonious pity. "Camille, how could you be so selfish? Mom and Dad worked their whole lives for that money!" Mom leaned into the lens, her face twisted in disgust. "Go to hell, Camille! We’re not giving you a single red cent. Keep playing your pathetic games!" The screen went black. The silence that followed was deafening. The man stood there for a beat, then suddenly raised his right hand and slapped himself across the face with a resounding crack. "God, I’m an idiot," he growled, shaking his head in self-loathing. "To think I fell for a girl whose acting is that painfully transparent." I stared blankly at the floor. "If you already knew they were setting me up… why did you make that call?" He looked down at me, his eyes dark and resolute. "Do you want revenge?" ... For two full days, my phone remained completely silent. Mom never called to check if I was breathing. Dad never texted. Neither of them contacted the police. They simply went about their lives, waiting for the clock to run out. On the afternoon of the third day, a piercing, theatrical wail echoed up the stairwell of my apartment building. Mom’s voice drifted up from the first floor to the third, loud enough to wake the entire block. "My poor, sweet baby girl! How could you leave your mother like this?" "No parent should ever have to bury their child! Lord, take me instead!" Brook was at her side, wearing a black trench coat, dabbing delicate tears with a handkerchief. "Mom, please, you have to stay strong! We have to handle her final arrangements!" Behind them walked two middle-aged strangers with shifty, darting eyes, their expressions tense and predatory. Doors opened all down the corridor as neighbors poked their heads out to watch the spectacle. Mom reached my door, pulled out a spare key, and shoved it open with dramatic flair, crying out my name— Only to freeze dead in her tracks. I was sitting comfortably on the sofa, a bag of potato chips in my lap, calmly watching her from across the room. Mom let out a strangled shriek. I tilted my head, offering her a faint, icy smile. "Hi, Mom. You look surprised. Aren’t you happy to see I’m still alive?"
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "562906", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel