My Mother Cut Me Apart For My Sister Chapter 01

My Mother Cut Me Apart For My Sister Chapter 01

The star the internet loved to hate disappeared without a trace. Her mother — Eleanor Hayes, a medical examiner — seemed to go gray overnight. Three years of missing-person posters and a massive reward turned up nothing.

Then Oakhaven got its next headline. Victor Thorne, the fugitive serial killer, was finally in custody. The sheer brutality of his crimes landed him a trial televised around the world.

The judge addressed the courtroom as the cameras rolled. “Over a ten-year period, the defendant committed one hundred and nineteen murders, each marked by extreme brutality.”

Victor let out a low laugh. “You’re all idiots. You still haven’t figured it out.”

“It wasn’t one hundred and nineteen. It was one hundred and twenty.”

“The last one—some cheap little starlet, apparently. I cut her up while she was still breathing.” He paused. “The stew that night was incredible.”

I hovered there, weightless, and swore I could still feel the blade splitting my skin down to the bone. The courtroom exploded. The judge leaned forward sharply.

“You’re lying. Our investigation found no evidence that dismemberment was part of your M.O..”

Victor smiled. “Yeah, fine. I’m lazy. I’ll give you that.”

“The woman who cut her up for me, piece by piece — that was her own mother.”

His gaze drifted to the expert witness section, and a grin split his face. “Isn’t that right, Dr. Eleanor? Oakhaven’s finest medical examiner?”

***Every eye in the courtroom swung to Mom. She stopped tapping her pen against the table and met his stare without blinking.

“Are you out of your mind? Are you suggesting I dismembered my own daughter?”

“Please. Everyone knows Chloe has been making movies and walking red carpets for the past three years. She’s alive and perfectly fine.”

Gasps and whispers erupted from the gallery. Someone shouted, “She’s right—Chloe is one of the biggest stars in the country!”

“I just saw her on TV yesterday hosting a charity gala! She’s a saint!”

“There is no hundred-and-twentieth victim. He’s stalling to dodge the needle!”

I drifted beside Mom and felt tears slip through me. Three years since I’d seen her face. Three years, and she still only remembered Chloe Hayes.

She’d forgotten me—the daughter she’d kicked out three years ago.

Victor’s eyebrows lifted. “Chloe.” A slow smile. “Interesting. A big star. No wonder she could drop five million to have Stella killed.”

The livestream chat exploded — thousands of comments calling him a liar, all tripping over one another to talk about how kind Chloe was.

He sneered at the courtroom monitor displaying the live chat, bored. Then one username made him go still.

A user named [stellarotinhell] had posted: [Stop spreading lies about Chloe. She’s literally the sweetest person alive, she would NEVER hire a hitman lmao]

Victor laughed. “So that’s her name. The dead one.”

“Stella.” He rolled it over his tongue. “Pretty name.”

The courtroom went silent. Even the chat froze for a beat.

Then every pair of eyes landed on Mom.

Everyone in Oakhaven knew Eleanor had two daughters. The younger one, Chloe — adored, talented, America’s sweetheart. A household name.

The older one was famous too. For all the wrong reasons.

Diva tantrums, grifting her followers with fake victim narratives, and worst of all, a deep-seated jealousy of Chloe that kept surfacing. Whenever she got caught in a lie, she’d fly into screaming rages—unhinged enough to make strangers flinch.

The internet turned on her overnight, and the industry blacklisted her. She was done.

Then she shoved Chloe into the path of an oncoming truck. When Eleanor confronted her, she ran—and never came home, despite the massive reward Eleanor posted.

People made a point of never saying my name around Mom. Now, Mom’s hand trembled around her pen.

She pulled out her phone. Her fingers slipped on the keyboard three times before she managed to type into the message thread: [Are you okay?]

I hovered behind her and saw the backlog of texts she’d sent over the years.

[Where the hell are you? Come home NOW or don’t bother coming home at all.]

[You shoved Chloe in front of a truck and ran off because I yelled at you?? Are you SERIOUS right now??]

[Having you was the worst thing that ever happened to this family. I wish you were dead.]

Then, scattered through the fury, a handful of messages sent in the dead of night:

[…I dreamed you died. Woke up shaking.]

[Are you really gone for good? Not even once?]

I shattered. Mom—do you know I can’t come back?

Do you know what you did that night? When Chloe brought home that black bag and asked you to butcher the meat inside—it wasn’t venison, Mom. It was me under your knife.

You did it yourself. For her.

I’m in the mountains. I’m in the river. I’m in their stomachs.

I can never come back.

Mom’s thumb hovered over send—while on the public screens, the livestream chat completely derailed.

[LMFAO the drama queen is at it again!! Teaming up with a serial killer to frame Chloe and Dr. Hayes now??]

[Don’t listen to him, Dr. Hayes! This is all Stella’s doing. Chloe is an angel, she could NEVER be involved in something like this!]

[That girl hasn’t told the truth a day in her life! Or did everyone forget when she shoved Chloe into traffic??]