Blurb：
My mother was folded into a Samsonite suitcase by my father, Dashiell Pike, the tech titan of Seattle's Emerald Corridor. On my fifth birthday, I watched cherry juice leak from the seams as Mommy went quiet. Mr. Pike, with his cold voice and suited arrogance, replaced her with his pregnant assistant. Now, years later, I am no longer the helpless little girl. I am Sel, and I will make Dashiell Pike pay for what he did. From the shadows of his empire, I plot my revenge, using every secret I learned as his forgotten daughter. But when his new family threatens to uncover the truth, I must decide how far I will go to destroy the monster who calls himself my father.
Content：
§01The monster that ate my mother wasn't hiding under my bed; he wore a suit, smelled of money, and called me his daughter.
On my fifth birthday, my mother disappeared into a Samsonite suitcase.
Her assistant, a woman with a smile as sweet as poison, had accused me of losing her pet cat.
So my father, as punishment for a mother failing to raise a proper daughter, folded my mother and tucked her inside.
The combination lock clicked shut, a sound like a bone snapping.
I couldn’t open it.
And from the seams of the suitcase, something that looked an awful lot like cherry juice began to leak.
Mommy went quiet.
Tears streamed down my face. I ran downstairs, my small fists hammering against the cold metal of my father’s car.
“Daddy, Sel can’t open the lock! I know I was wrong, I’ll be good from now on! Please let Mommy out!”
The big, black car rocked back and forth, rhythmically. Inside, the assistant’s cheeks were flushed red as she cried and moaned. It took a long, long time for my father to finally lower the window.
His voice was cold. “Don’t call me Daddy. It’s Mr. Pike.”
He adjusted his tie, his face a mask of irritation. “Your mother, in her pathetic jealousy, taught you to lie just to get my attention. She can stay in there a few more days and reflect on her actions.”
A week later, when they finally opened the suitcase, everyone who saw my mother’s mangled form screamed.
That same day, my father returned home, his arm around the assistant, whose belly was just beginning to swell. “Where’s your mother? Has she learned her lesson?”
I opened my mouth, and the tears fell like stones.
“Mr. Pike,” I whispered, “Mommy’s dead.”
§02
The older kids from next door were the ones who found her. They knocked on our door, pinching their noses.
I was eating a box of stale Pop-Tarts, the frosting cracked and faded.
The smell from inside our house made them gag.
“Little girl, where are your parents? What’s that smell? It’s awful.”
I blinked, my voice small.
“Sel doesn’t have a daddy, only Mr. Pike. And Mommy is asleep in the suitcase.”
When the suitcase was finally forced open, I saw my mother again. Her eyes were wide open, staring at nothing. So much cherry juice had spilled.
Her skin was cold. I called her name, but she didn’t answer me.
The older kids’ faces turned white.
“Who could be so cruel? To stuff a woman in a suitcase!”
“She must have been dead for days. The kid’s only five, she has no idea. She thinks her mom is just sleeping.”
I didn’t know what ‘dead’ meant.
One of the girls called some men in dark clothes. They covered my mother with a white sheet and carried her away in a long car.
That’s when I finally understood.
Dead meant becoming a star in the sky. Dead meant Sel would never have a mommy again.
“Mommy, don’t you want me anymore? Mommy!”
I ran after that long car, my bare feet slapping against the cold pavement. But I was too slow. I fell, scraping my knee, and couldn’t catch up.
My arm was bleeding. It hurt so much.
And I had no mommy to kiss it and make it better.
My chest started to hurt, too. A deep, aching pain.
When I looked up, I saw a giant screen on a skyscraper. It was showing a picture of Mr. Pike and the assistant.
One of the neighbors gently helped me up.
“Such a tragedy,” she whispered to her friend. “Some people die so young, leaving a five-year-old behind. And the husband is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, some other woman gets pregnant, and her man celebrates it on every screen in the city.”
“I know, right? The tech titan of Seattle's Emerald Corridor, Dashiell Pike—wait, is that him? No, the news is saying he’s at a tech summit in Tokyo. This must be old footage.”
They didn’t know. The man on the screen, the titan they spoke of, was my father.
I pushed their hands away and walked home alone, barefoot, the tears unstoppable.
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The End