There I was, silently watching over my own corpse. Even as a spirit, the memories of my final torment brought pain and fear. My hand drifted to my throat, reaching for the pendant that used to hang there — the one engraved V.F. — and closed around nothing.
Right then, Salvatore Greco walked over, his hands scrubbed raw and red, a grim look on his face as he shared the latest findings with Mom. "She bled out from her liver. And..." he hesitated, "Her fingerprints were destroyed. Identifying her is gonna be tough."
Mom paused, her mind racing back to a similar case from a few months ago.
"There was a killing like this in Calabrese territory recently. Same method," she directed one of her crew. "Dominic, dig into that."
Standing there as a spirit, watching my mom work so intently, I couldn't help but think, "Mom has always been the person I looked up to, all my life."
The crew hadn't found much since this wasn't the primary scene. Eventually, about a thousand feet from the dump site, they stumbled upon a cake smashed on the ground, its frosting spoiled.
"Probably the victim's," one of the soldiers guessed.