She thought the worst day of her life was behind her.
She was wrong.

Ari Wilburn can’t forget what she did. One terrible decision. One tragic event. One sister dead. Now years later, she’s barely holding her life together—until a cryptic clue surfaces that makes her question everything she believed happened.

Then she meets Tina, a desperate mother searching for her missing daughter. Tina believes her own father took the child. There’s just one problem:

He’s dead.

The two women form a fragile alliance, bonded by grief and secrets. But as Ari digs into Tina’s story—and her own—she finds disturbing connections between their lives. Patterns that don’t make sense. People who aren’t who they claim to be. And a past that isn’t as buried as she thought.

Someone knows the truth. And they’ll do anything to keep it from coming out.

Even if it means killing again.

Dark, twisty, and full of jaw-dropping surprises, this thriller will make you question everything—and everyone—until the final page.

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Although Tina Alvarez escaped a trafficking ring, her newborn daughter wasn’t so lucky. Sold on the black market, the baby vanished without a trace. Most people would’ve given up, but Tina never stopped searching.

When Ari Wilburn offers to help, it sounds easy enough: Find the child. It should be simple. It isn’t. Because the deeper Ari digs, the more twisted the threat becomes. People connected to the case are turning up dead. And the clues point to one disturbing truth:

This isn’t just about a missing child—it’s about Ari. Her past. Her secrets. And a killer who is watching. Waiting. Killing.

As Ari gets closer to the truth, she’ll have to make an impossible choice: expose the dark secrets her family buried—or let an innocent child disappear forever.

Terrifying, addictive, and shockingly twisty, this psychological thriller will have you questioning every memory, every motive, and every word…until the final, devastating reveal.

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She had secretly wanted the baby to die, but Fate never sided with her until twenty-three years later, when Destiny Childs got her wish.

Broken, middle-aged Destiny daily struggles to survive her haunting past. Dead parents. Unplanned teen pregnancy. Cyclic addiction and depression. Life hasn’t treated her kindly. Then one day she sees the name of her castaway daughter on the news: a victim of murder.

Seeing this as an opportunity to extort the rich family her daughter left behind, Destiny crafts a plan. But as all her plans go, it loosens a mess of secrets long buried, along with the truth behind the killing.

In this haunting murder mystery short story, discover the gruesomely intimate stranger harbored within Destiny… and who may lurk within any one of us.