The Greater Good

I died on the eve of the Fourth of July, my neck sliced open by the furious father of a victim.
It happened because my husband, a Deputy Chief of Detectives, decided it would be a brilliant PR move for his career to have our five-year-old daughter present a bouquet of flowers to the city’s most notorious serial killer. I fought it with every fiber of my being, and in doing so, became public enemy number one.
My husband stared at me, his face a mask of disappointment. “How can you be so selfish?”
My daughter screamed through her tears, “Mommy’s bad! I don’t want this mommy! I want a new mommy!”
The entire internet branded me a heartless monster. Even the killer, from behind the bars of his cell, claimed that my interference was the only thing stopping him from confessing his crimes.
Now, I’ve been reborn.
I’m standing here again, surrounded by the blinding flash of media cameras, watching my daughter clutch a bouquet of flowers as she takes timid steps toward that blood-soaked demon.
This time, I’ve melted into the crowd. This time, I’m just going to watch.

1
The first thing I did after being reborn was take a pair of nail clippers and a brush to David and Zoe. Then I went straight to a DNA lab.
“I want a new mommy! I don’t want this mommy! I hate her!”
My daughter’s shrieks from my past life were still ringing in my ears, but it was the two different uses of the word “mommy” that now haunted me.
My husband David’s department had already formed a special task force for this case. The lead suspect would be caught soon, which meant I didn’t have much time. I paid extra for a rush job at the lab, and just before they announced the killer’s capture, I got the results.
When I opened the envelope and saw the words printed on the page, my legs gave out. The strength drained from my body, and I nearly collapsed right there on the pavement.
RESULTS: David Reed is confirmed as the biological father of the subject, Zoe Reed.
RESULTS: Claire Sterling is conclusively excluded as the biological mother of the subject, Zoe Reed.
The world tilted on its axis.
David was Zoe’s father, but I… I had no biological connection to the child I had raised.
No wonder Zoe’s attitude toward me had soured over the years, escalating into open defiance. They say children can’t hide their true feelings. Even if she didn’t know the words, her actions had screamed the truth all along.
I stumbled out of the clinic and started to laugh, a raw, broken sound.
I was such a fool. An absolute idiot. My own husband had cheated on me, swapped our child, and I never suspected a thing.
During the storm of public hatred in my past life, it was Zoe’s childish voice that had delivered the final, killing blow. Her televised interview had sent my reputation spiraling into an abyss from which it never recovered. I’d questioned everything—my sanity, my judgment, my very worth as a human being—but I never once questioned my own womb.
Thinking back, that sudden blackout I experienced during labor… it had to be his doing. A setup. He had swapped our real baby for this one.
For years, he’d used my father’s political influence to claw his way up from a beat cop to Deputy Chief. Now that my father’s power was waning, he wanted me gone. He wanted to bring Zoe’s real mother into our home.
He knew I adored Zoe, that I would die for her. So he used that love as a weapon. He orchestrated the whole flower ceremony knowing I would object. It was a win-win for him. If it worked, he’d be hailed as a compassionate genius, paving the way for his next promotion. When I inevitably intervened, he could paint me as an unhinged, hysterical woman, giving him the perfect public excuse to divorce me and play the victim.
My fingers crumpled the DNA report into a tight ball.
If I was a fool for meddling last time, then this time, I would respect the natural order of things. This time, I’d let fate run its course.
The next morning, after an all-night manhunt, one of the lead suspects in the serial robbery-homicides, Carl Russo, was finally in custody.
Just like last time, he was a brick wall. No matter how they interrogated him, no matter what evidence they presented, he just stared blankly and repeated the same line.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
The case had the city in a panic, and the pressure from above was immense. They had three days to crack it, or the entire task force would be demoted to street patrol. Russo’s known family were all dead. So, with time running out, Deputy Chief David Reed proposed a radical idea. The same idea as last time.
They would appeal to the killer’s humanity. They would use the innocence of a child to awaken his conscience. His own daughter, Zoe, would present the killer with flowers. It would be a powerful, emotional spectacle, designed to break down the suspect’s psychological defenses.
The proposal was risky, but his superiors, desperate for a breakthrough, approved it.
To ensure that I, the mother, would show up at the perfect moment to create a scene, David had a “sympathetic” subordinate place an anonymous tip.
In my last life, I took that call and charged onto the scene like a raging bull, screaming and shouting, destroying the ceremony in front of the entire world’s media.
This time, when the same number flashed on my screen, I silenced it. I watched the screen light up and go dark, again and again.
Thirty minutes before the ceremony was scheduled to begin, I “noticed” the missed calls and raced to the scene. I didn’t ram my car through the police barricades like before. I parked blocks away, slipped into the back of the crowd, and waited.
In the center of the cordoned-off area, Zoe stood in a pristine white princess dress, clutching a bouquet. Her eyes darted nervously at the cameras and the murmuring crowd.
Carl Russo, shackled at the hands and feet, was led out. I heard the raw cries of anguish and rage from the victims’ families in the crowd.
My husband, in his immaculate uniform, knelt beside Zoe. He patted her head, whispering words of encouragement, but his eyes were frantically scanning the crowd. I knew who he was looking for. I ducked lower.
The show had to go on. With me still a no-show, David had no choice but to give Zoe a gentle push forward.
Just as Zoe stood on her tiptoes, holding the flowers up to the killer, all hell broke loose.
With a sudden, violent twist, Russo threw the guards off him. In one fluid motion, he lunged forward, his shackled hands snatching Zoe and pulling her against his body like a shield.
“What kind of moronic idea was this?” Russo spat, his voice a low growl. “You people really are idiots.”
He tightened his arm around Zoe’s neck, his eyes burning with feral intensity. “I’ve killed enough people to know the more I talk, the faster I die.”
“Get me five hundred thousand in cash and a car. Now. Or I’ll snap this little brat’s neck!”
The next second, before anyone could react, Russo jammed his thumb into Zoe’s eye socket.
With a sickening pop, he ripped the eyeball out.
Zoe’s scream was inhuman. Russo threw the severed eye to the ground and crushed it under his heel.
By the time I burst screaming from the crowd, Carl Russo was twisting Zoe’s arm, a look of manic glee on his face. The sharp crack of bone breaking, mingled with Zoe’s piercing shriek, sent a wave of nausea through me.
Several officers intercepted me, holding me back.
I dropped to my knees on the pavement, my voice cracking. “Please! Please, don’t hurt my daughter anymore!” I begged Russo. “She’s only five years old! Let her go, I’m begging you! I’ll do anything, whatever you want, just let her go!”
Russo’s eyes glinted as he looked from me to David. “Well, Chief Reed, is this your wife? Not bad looking at all!”
He tightened his grip on Zoe, his gaze mocking. “You were so eager to slap the cuffs on me, weren't you, Chief? What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
“I don’t know how a moron like you made it to Deputy Chief, honestly. You personally delivered a hostage right into my hands. If you weren’t the one who arrested me, I’d think you were my partner.” His expression turned vicious. He leaned down and bit into Zoe’s ear.
I screamed as he tore it clean off with his teeth.
Zoe went limp in his arms, mercifully unconscious. David’s face was a mask of pure fury, but he was frozen, helpless.
“I told you!” Russo roared. “Half a million and a car! You have twenty minutes. If I don’t see it…”
CRACK!
A single gunshot shattered the air. A blossom of red exploded on Russo’s shoulder, a gaping wound. Instantly, officers swarmed him, wrestling the now-unconscious Zoe from his grasp and slamming him to the ground.
A frantic scramble, and Zoe’s limp, bloody body was rushed into an ambulance.
In the sterile corridor outside the hospital operating room, I had my hands buried in the collar of David’s uniform, my palms connecting with his face again and again, the slaps echoing in the quiet hall.
“Why would you do this? Isn’t she your daughter?” I shrieked. “David, I don’t care if you want to climb the corporate ladder, but to use your own flesh and blood to do it? Are you even human?”
His colleagues finally intervened, pulling me away as David’s face began to swell.
“That’s enough, Claire!” he finally roared, pushing them off. “If you have a problem, take it up with me! Don’t attack my team!”
He pointed a trembling finger at me. “This is all your fault! If you had just shown up on time and stopped the ceremony like you were supposed to, none of this would have happened!”
“Yes, it was my idea! But it was for the good of the city! I have a duty to the victims’ families! I have a duty to this uniform!”
“I’m busy, I’m at work all the time. I thought I could count on you to take care of her, but you were so careless. You let this happen.” He shook his head, his voice dripping with disappointment. “Zoe is maimed because of you, Claire. I’m so, so disappointed in you.”
Seeing his feigned despair, I grabbed a nearby metal trash can and hurled it at him.
“You son of a bitch!” I screamed. “You kept this whole thing a secret from me, and now that it’s blown up in your face, you dare to blame me? How dare you?”
“If one of your men hadn’t called me, I’d still be in the dark! What happened to Zoe is your fault, and yours alone! If she doesn’t make it, I swear to God, I will kill you!”
“Get out!” I shrieked, my voice raw. “All of you, just get the hell out of my sight!”
Just then, the light above the operating room door went out. The surgeon emerged, his face grim.
I pushed past the officers and rushed to him. “Doctor, my daughter… is she going to be okay?”
“The broken bones will heal,” he said, his voice heavy with pity. “But her eye, and her ear… there was nothing we could do.” He sighed. “She’s only five. Such a tragedy.”
In the private room, Zoe lay still, her head wrapped in so many bandages she looked like a tiny mummy. Looking at the ruin of her face, the empty socket where an eye used to be, and remembering the words on that DNA report, I felt nothing. Not a single shred of pity.
“Mommy is always so strict with me. She makes me do homework all the time. If I don’t listen, she hits me. Sometimes I think she’s going to kill me.”
“Daddy is the best. He takes me to the park and buys me ice cream. Mommy just tells me to behave. She never lets me have any fun.”
“My daddy is the greatest man in the world. I want to help him. If Mommy didn’t hold him back all the time, he would probably be the police commissioner by now.”
“I hate my mommy. Daddy says she’s just dragging him down. I wish I didn’t have a mommy.”
I sat by the bed, her words from my past life echoing in my mind. Even if she knew about her birth mother, those weren’t the words of a normal five-year-old. Someone had coached her. Someone had fed her those lines.
As I was lost in thought, a soft groan came from the bed.
She was awake.
The moment her one good eye focused on me, a tear trickled down her cheek. But the words that came out of her mouth were laced with an icy resentment that chilled me to the bone.
“It’s all your fault! Daddy said he called you! Why were you so late?”
“If you had come sooner, it wouldn’t hurt so much! I hate you!”
“I want my mommy! Not you! I want my other mommy!”
David had been called back to the station for an emergency meeting about the catastrophic failure of his plan. We were alone. Seeing her writhing and screaming in the bed, I dropped the loving mother act.
“You got what you deserved,” I said, my voice flat. “What happened to you today is your father’s fault. It has nothing to do with me.”
“You’re lying!” she shrieked. “Daddy told me you never liked me! He wouldn’t lie to me!”
“Oh, really? Then why am I the only one here with you right now? Why isn’t your precious daddy here? And this ‘other mommy’… if she loves you so much, where is she?”
“Because you’re a bad person!” Zoe sobbed, her remaining eye glaring at me with pure hatred. “Daddy said you’re a bad person, and if my other mommy saw you, you would hurt her! That’s why she has to hide!”
I let out a cold laugh. “He’s quite the storyteller, isn’t he? He’s also a liar. The truth is, he and your mother don’t really care about you. They care more about having a little baby boy.”
“Why else would your father send you to give flowers to a monster? He never wanted you to survive. If he really cared, why didn’t he stop you himself? Why did he have to call me? It’s not like he’s paralyzed.”
A five-year-old’s logic is a fragile thing. My words hit their mark. Her face crumpled, and fresh tears began to fall. “You’re lying,” she whimpered. “Daddy and Mommy love me the most.”
I patted her bandaged head. “Keep dreaming, you poor thing.”
“Your IV is almost empty. I’m going to get the nurse. You stay here and don’t move.”
I walked out of the room and ran right into David, who was just returning from his meeting.
“How’s Zoe?” he asked, his tone clipped.
“She’s awake. I was just getting the nurse to change her drip.”
He crooked a finger at me. “Come with me. I need to talk to you about something.”
I followed him to the stairwell. The moment we were inside, the heavy fire door slammed shut behind me. Before I could turn, two of David’s colleagues grabbed me, pinning me against the cold concrete wall.
“David, what are you doing?”
He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and an ink pad. He grabbed my hand and forced my index finger onto the ink.
“Zoe’s injuries… there’s going to be an internal investigation,” he said, his voice low. “I can’t take the fall for this, Claire. The whole department would be disciplined. So I need a scapegoat. And that’s you.”
“All you have to do is put your fingerprint on this Guardianship Consent Form. It says you voluntarily allowed Zoe to approach the suspect. That way, I keep my job.”
“For my career,” he whispered, his face inches from mine, “I’m afraid I have to ask you for this little favor… honey.”

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