1 Five years after I cut ties with my mother, the Chief of Homicide, I live-streamed a murder on the dark web. The very woman who once swore she wouldn’t care if I died in a ditch had personally extradited me, locking the heavy steel cuffs around my wrists. In the interrogation room, my mother looked as if she had aged a lifetime overnight. Her hair was shot with gray, and her hands shook so violently she could barely point her finger at me. “Zachary, how did you turn into this?” she whispered, her voice cracking. “A total disregard for human life, three cold-blooded murders, and a live broadcast to mock the law. I wish I had never brought you into this world.” Watching her chest heave with righteous anger, I curled my lips into a mocking smile. “You never liked me much when I was obedient anyway,” I said, leaning back. “Your heart has always belonged to your precious adopted son, hasn’t it?” I pulled a blood-stained commendation medal from my pocket and tossed it onto the metal table between us. “You always said he was better than me, that he was the one destined to inherit your legacy. So how come he couldn’t even beat a failure like me?” My mother’s pupils dilated. She lunged across the table, grabbing me by the collar. “What did you do to Dominic?!” I didn’t answer. I just stared into her eyes and smiled. Just as the air was leaving my lungs, she abruptly let go of me, stumbling backward. With trembling fingers, she pulled out her phone. “No, it’s not possible, it can’t be,” she mumbled to herself, desperately dialing Dominic’s number. The words My Baby Boy flashed on the screen in bold letters. But there was no answer. And there I sat, her biological son, right in front of her, lacking even the right to be in her contacts list. After her fifth call went straight to voicemail, she snapped. “It was you!” she screamed. “Dominic told me he won a vacation voucher. You lured him out of the country!” If the deputy hadn’t held her back, she would have torn me apart with her bare hands. “Dominic just graduated from college, Zachary! How could you do this to him?” At the thought of the other three young victims who had died on my live stream, my mother looked as if she might faint. The deputy grabbed his radio, his voice urgent. “We have a fourth victim. All units, initiate an immediate search for Dominic’s location!” My mother carefully picked up the blood-stained medal from the floor, clutching it to her chest as if it were a holy relic. When I was a child, she wouldn’t even let me look at her medals; yet she had let Dominic wear this one as a lucky charm every single day. “Zachary, where did you hide him?” I shrugged. “Find him yourself. You never believed a word I said when we lived together, so why start believing me now?” My mother clutched her chest, her face pale with fury. The look she gave me was filled with pure hatred. “When I adopted Dominic, I only wanted to give you some company,” she hissed. “I never blamed you for being less capable than him, but your mind was always twisted. When he got top marks, you chose to cheat on your exams instead of studying harder.” She took a ragged breath. “When you wanted to drop out, I found you a decent job at the factory, but you couldn’t even keep your head down. You ran around with thugs. Dominic went to convince you to return to school, and you hired people to beat him up!” Her eyes were bloodshot, her knuckles white. “Dominic was the one who cried and begged me not to lock you up. He didn’t want you to have a criminal record. I gave you money for a prep school, and you took it and ran off to some lawless border town to make quick cash.” She slammed her palm onto the table. “I have spent thirty years in force, putting monsters behind bars, and I end up raising a murderer for a son!” The deputy and the recording officer stared at me with undisguised disgust. Ever since Dominic had entered our home, everyone had looked at me with those exact same eyes. I was used to it. I let out a cold snort, closed my eyes, and met her anger with absolute silence. My silence only enraged her further. She pulled a small, tarnished gold locket from her pocket and threw it at me. “When your father was alive, we had nothing. He worked extra shifts assembling cheap holiday lights until he nearly went blind just to buy you this locket. He said you deserved to have what other kids had. After he died in that crash, this was the only thing you had left of him, and you pawned it for a pack of cigarettes!” Her voice trembled with disgust. “It was Dominic who used his own allowance and scholarship money to buy it back for you! And just because I wouldn’t let him hand it back to you until you sorted your life out, you went around telling everyone Dominic was my secret bastard!” At the mention of my father, my breathing caught. I stared fixedly at the little gold locket resting on the metal table. Seeing that her words had finally pierced my armor, my mother softened her tone. Her hands, which used to swing me high into the air when I was a little boy, now pressed flat against the cold table. “Zachary, tell me where Dominic is,” she pleaded. “You’re still young. If you cooperate, we can still ask for a lighter sentence.” I let out a loud, mocking laugh. “Are you kidding me, Mom? I’ve killed people. What kind of lighter sentence are you talking about?” I leaned forward, my voice dropping to a whisper. “You just want to wrap this up quickly so you can send me to the gallows and get back to your precious adopted son.” “You!” My mother choked on her words, her face turning crimson. The deputy quickly stepped in, handing her a bottle of blood pressure medication. When he turned back to me, his eyes were filled with disgust. “Zachary, you’ve gone too far,” the deputy said, his voice cold. “I’ve been to your mother’s house. The walls are still covered in your elementary school certificates. They’re yellowed with age, but she never had the heart to tear them down.” He took a step closer. “Dominic lived in a small, curtained-off corner of the living room for years, while your bedroom was kept exactly as you left it. Your mother dusted it every single day, keeping it spotless. Whenever colleagues praised Dominic, she always made sure to clarify he was her adopted son, never once speaking ill of you. She didn’t even change his last name to hers. Her love was silent, and you warped it into this?” My mother wept quietly into her hands. “Zachary, do you know why Dominic worked so hard to get into the police academy?” she sobbed, throwing the medal onto the table. “He felt guilty. He thought his presence in our home divided my love and brought you unnecessary pressure. He gave up his own dreams to inherit my badge so you could live your life without any burden.” She covered her face, crying like a lost child. “He was disqualified during the background check because of his biological mother’s record, and he wept for days. You had the chance, and you threw it away. I failed as a parent. Why did I ever adopt him? If I hadn’t, none of this would have happened.” This was the first time I had ever seen my mother cry. To me, she had always been an invincible shield, a guardian of justice. I stared at the medal on the table, a bitter smile playing on my lips. She claimed to love me, yet she had forgotten that my dream, my very first dream, had also been to wear that uniform. She had forgotten how she used to ruffle my hair, teaching me self-defense moves, playing cops and robbers with me in our tiny backyard. The person who had systematically destroyed that dream, ensuring I could never wear the badge, was the very boy she was mourning. “Zachary, if you still consider me your mother, tell me where he is,” she pleaded, looking up. “Is he alive?” I stared at my silver handcuffs. Once, I had worn a silver bracelet she had made for me. It had been lost so long ago I couldn’t even remember what it looked like. Just like I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be loved. “Susan, if you still consider me your son, go to my father’s grave,” I said quietly. “The clue you want is there.” The moment the words left my mouth, my mother bolted out of the room. The station mobilized every available officer, rushing to seal off the local cemetery. But there was no sign of Dominic there. Inside the columbarium, right beside my father’s urn, they found only a small, dusty digital voice recorder. My mother returned to the interrogation room, her face pale, holding the recorder in her hand. “This is your clue?” she asked, her voice tight. “This device has been sitting in that grave for five years. What does this have to do with Dominic?” The technician spent a grueling hour restoring the corrupted audio files from the dusty recorder. The file was two hours long. When the audio began to play, a heavy, suffocating silence fell over the room. The sound of a teenager crying and begging for mercy echoed through the speakers, desperate and raw. My mother slammed her fist against the wall. “Zachary! You recorded yourself bullying Dominic five years ago? Were you trying to drive him to suicide?!” I laughed so hard tears began to stream down my face. “Susan, everyone says you’re a brilliant detective, that you love me so much. Have you managed to brainwash yourself too? If you actually cared about me, how can you not even recognize my voice?” I stood up, the chains of my handcuffs rattling against the metal table. “That’s me, Susan! That was me being tormented, begging for mercy, and being ignored! It was me! It was me!” My mother’s eyes widened in horror. The audio continued to play. Then, Dominic’s voice came through the speaker, light and dripping with malice. “Scream, Zach. Scream louder. Let your dead dad hear how his precious little boy is being broken, haha.” My voice on the tape was raw from screaming. “You’ll pay for this, Dominic! My mother is going to lock you up!” A sharp, violent slap echoed through the recording. “Your mother?” Dominic sneered. “Are you still living in a fairy tale, Zach? It’s survival of the fittest. You think she’s going to choose you? A failure who cheated on his exams and can’t even get into a community college, or a straight-A student on a scholarship? Who do you think Susan will believe?” Even though I had known the answer back then, my younger self on the tape kept screaming, stubborn and desperate. “My mother is the Chief of Homicide! She won’t be fooled by a monster like you! Your mother was a murderer she caught! She took you in out of pity, but you’re rotten to the core! You framed me for cheating, you stole my locket, you paid those thugs to violate me!” The audio suddenly glitched, looping on the words violate me over and over again, like a curse echoing in the small room. My mother stood frozen, turning into stone. Everyone in that room knew who Susan had chosen to believe five years ago. And even now, she struggled to accept the truth. “This… this isn’t real,” she whispered, her lips turning blue. “You forged this, didn’t you? You made this up to frame Dominic!” The technician looked down, his voice barely audible. “Captain Beckett, the audio is completely genuine. There are no signs of editing or digital manipulation.” My mother collapsed into her chair, her face completely blank. Looking at the tiny recorder, my mind drifted back to that cold afternoon five years ago. After months of being framed by Dominic, I had bought that cheap recorder to gather proof. I had gone to my father’s grave to cry and tell him what was happening, only to be cornered by Dominic and three older thugs he had hired. As they dragged me down, I managed to slip the recorder into the gap beside my father’s urn. It had stayed there for five years, waiting for the light of day. “How could this happen?” my mother murmured. Just then, the door was kicked open. “Captain! We found the fourth victim!” The officer handed a stack of photos to my mother. In the pictures, Dominic was kneeling, his arms stretched out and pinned to a wooden cross in a decaying offshore warehouse. His head hung low, frozen in a posture of eternal repentance. His body was pale and cold, having been dead for days. My mother’s chest heaved, and before she could take another breath, her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed onto the floor. The next time I saw her was the day before my trial. She wore civilian clothes, her shoulders slumped, her spirit completely broken. In the visitation room, she slowly picked up the receiver. “Zachie.” The nickname felt as if it belonged to another lifetime. “Why didn’t you tell me Dominic was hurting you?” I toyed with the black telephone cord. “I did tell you. You just chose not to believe me.” Tears spilled from her eyes. “I taught you to use the law to protect yourself. Why did you have to kill them?” I stopped playing with the cord and looked her straight in the eyes. “Susan, even now, you still don’t believe me.” I let out a soft sigh. “But it doesn’t matter. After tomorrow, your wish will finally come true.” “What do you mean?” The guard tapped my shoulder, signaling that my time was up. I hung up the phone and walked away, ignoring her hand slamming against the glass partition. The next day, the courtroom was packed to the brim. “The defendant, Zachary Beckett, committed four counts of homicide in an offshore territory, three of which were broadcasted live on the internet with extreme cruelty, causing severe social harm…” The gallery erupted into shouting. The families of the victims wept and screamed for justice. “My daughter was so young! He stabbed her to death!” “My wife had a heart attack watching that stream! He destroyed our family! He deserves the death penalty!” I remained silent, looking toward the back row. My mother sat with her face buried in her hands, refusing to look at me. “I have nothing to say,” I told the judge. The gavel fell. Death penalty. The courtroom erupted into cheers. I closed my eyes and whispered in my heart: Mom, your wish has finally come true. Susan walked out of the courtroom in a daze. When she finally came to, she found herself sitting on her old sofa, staring at a faded photograph in her wallet. It was a picture of me when I was seven, missing a front tooth. I had lost that tooth in a schoolyard fight. She remembered holding me that day, telling me: “When you are bullied, tell Mom. But while you are waiting for me to get there, you must protect yourself. Strike back if you have to.” Strike back? Susan’s face turned white. She grabbed her keys and bolted back to the police station. “Pull up the live stream of Zachary’s murders! There is something wrong with this case!”
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