MY FATHER'S LAST VICTIM E-Book

Claire Smith

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 98

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

What happens after the world learns your darkest secret—one you didn’t even know you were keeping? In My Father’s Last Victim 2: The Aftermath – Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Past, Claire Smith returns with a powerful and deeply personal sequel to her gripping memoir. The truth about her father—a man she once trusted and loved—has been exposed. Now, she must navigate the aftermath of that revelation: the judgment, the whispers, and the struggle to reclaim her identity beyond the shadow of his crimes. The trial may be over, but the scars remain. As Claire battles nightmares, guilt, and the weight of the past, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery, questioning who she is without him and whether true justice was ever served. Through therapy, confrontation, and the courage to tell her own story, she seeks to break free from a legacy she never chose. Raw, emotional, and ultimately hopeful, My Father’s Last Victim 2 is a memoir about resilience, healing, and reclaiming life after devastation. It’s a must-read for those who believe in the power of survival and the strength of the human spirit.

Leseprobe

CLAIRE SMITH

My Father’s Last Victim 2

The Aftermath – Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Childhood

First published by Ginnie Writes Publication 2025

Copyright © 2025 by CLAIRE SMITH

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

CLAIRE SMITH asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

you can reach Claire Smith [email protected]

First edition

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To the ones who never had the chance to speak,

To the ones whose stories were buried in silence,

To the ones who never got justice.

This is for you.

And to those who have survived the unimaginable—

May you find the strength to reclaim your voice,

The courage to heal,

And the power to write your own ending.

With love and resilience,

Claire Smith

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

— Flannery O’Connor

“Some scars are carved so deep they may never fade, but they do not define who we are—they remind us of what we have survived.”

— Unknown

“Monsters don’t just live in the dark. Sometimes, they sit across the dinner table.”

— Claire Smith

Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

I. PART ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

II. PART TWO

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

III. PART THREE

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Afterword

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Writing this book was one of the hardest things I have ever done. There were moments when I wanted to walk away, when the weight of my past felt too heavy to put into words. But this book—this story—is not just about the past. It’s about survival, about reclaiming my voice, and about moving forward. And I couldn’t have done it alone.

To my mother—for all of our pain, for all of our silence, for all of the complicated emotions we carry, thank you for staying. Thank you for trying. I know neither of us had the answers, but we found our way through. And for that, I am grateful.

To Lily—you showed me that I wasn’t alone. That survival is not just about getting through the worst of it but about choosing to keep going every single day. You gave me strength when I had none left, and for that, I owe you more than words can say.

To Detective Harris and the law enforcement officers who fought for justice for the women my father took—thank you. I know there were days when it felt impossible, but you never gave up. You gave those families closure, and you gave me the truth, even when it was hard to hear.

To the survivors and the families of the victims—this book is, in part, for you. Your pain, your strength, your voices matter. I hope that wherever you are, you find peace.

To my therapist—thank you for helping me untangle the knots of my mind. For reminding me that healing isn’t about erasing the past but learning how to live with it.

To my friends who stayed—the ones who saw me as Claire, not just as the daughter of a monster. Your love, your patience, and your refusal to let me disappear into the weight of my last name saved me in ways you will never fully understand.

To every person who has ever struggled with the weight of their past—I see you. You are not alone. Your story is still being written, and you have the power to make it your own.

And finally, to myself—for finding the courage to tell the truth.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I know this:

I am here. I am alive. I am free.

And for the first time, that is enough.

With all my heart,

Claire Smith

Prologue

chapter-seperator

A Reflection on the Truth That Changed Everything

They say the truth will set you free. What they don’t tell you is how much it will break you first. There was a time when I believed that the worst pain in life came from the things we could see—the scraped knees of childhood, the broken bones, the bruises left behind by a careless world. I used to think that pain was something tangible, something you could press a bandage over and watch heal. I never understood, not then, that the deepest wounds are the ones that don’t bleed. They are the kind that live beneath the surface, the kind that time doesn’t always mend.

The night I learned who my father truly was, I lost more than just the illusion of a happy childhood—I lost the man I had loved, the man I had trusted, the man I had called my hero. I lost the foundation upon which my entire life had been built. One moment, I was the daughter of Richard Smith, the man with the warm smile and the strong hands, the man who could fix anything. The next, I was the daughter of a stranger—a man whose darkness had stretched farther than I had ever imagined, whose crimes were whispered about in the halls of our town, whose name had become something to fear.

The truth did not set me free that night. It caged me in, locking me inside a world I could never unsee.

I remember the weight of the air in our house in the days that followed, thick with something unspoken, something neither my mother nor I had the words to name. The walls seemed to close in on me, suffocating me with memories of a life I now questioned. The kitchen where he used to drink his morning coffee, the hallway where he ruffled my hair before heading off to work, the study where he kept his secrets—it all became tainted, every corner of my childhood home holding ghosts of a past I could no longer trust.

I had spent my entire life believing my father was a good man. I had defended him when the neighbors whispered, dismissed my own unease when I noticed the way his hands clenched too tightly around the steering wheel or how his study door was always locked. I had chosen not to ask questions. I had chosen to believe in him.

And for that, I carried guilt.

In the beginning, I convinced myself that knowing the truth was enough. That once the world found out who my father really was, justice would follow. That I could move forward, broken but at least unburdened. But I was wrong. Knowing the truth is only the first step. What comes after is far more complicated, far more painful.

Because the truth doesn’t just change how you see the past. It changes how the world sees you.

The first time I walked into a grocery store after my father’s arrest, I felt the weight of every stare, the way people turned away when I looked at them, the way whispers followed me down the aisles. I wasn’t just Claire Smith anymore. I was his daughter.

No one said it outright, but I saw it in their eyes: the question they were too afraid to ask me. Did you know?

And in some ways, I understood why they wondered. How could a daughter not see the truth about her own father? How could I live under the same roof with him and not suspect what he was capable of?

But the thing about monsters is that they don’t always look like monsters. Sometimes, they look like the man who tucks you into bed at night. Sometimes, they look like the father who teaches you how to ride a bike, who kisses your forehead and calls you kiddo, who brings your mother flowers just because. Sometimes, they look like the person you love most in the world.

I wanted to scream at them all, to tell them that I had been just as blind as they were. That I had been just as deceived. But in those first few weeks, I didn’t have the strength for explanations. I barely had the strength to get out of bed.

I stopped going to school. The thought of walking through those hallways, of facing the whispers and the stares, was too much. I deleted my social media, unable to stomach the comments flooding my inbox—some sympathetic, others cruel. She had to have known. She had to be just like him.

My world became small, shrinking down to the walls of my bedroom. But even there, I couldn’t escape the nightmares. I remember the night I pressed my ear to the wood, listening. My father’s voice was low, steady, speaking to someone on the phone. The words were muffled, but I caught enough. They’re looking in the wrong places. No one will find anything. I had barely understood what I was hearing, but my gut twisted with something dark and unfamiliar.

Later, I found the notebook. Hidden between old books on a hallway shelf, wedged so tightly I might never have noticed it if I hadn’t been searching for answers. The pages were filled with names, dates, descriptions. Some were circled, others crossed out. One name repeated over and over: Katherine Wells.

That was when the questions started to drown me.

At first, I tried to deny it. I told myself there had to be an explanation. My father wasn’t… he couldn’t be what I was beginning to suspect. But when I confronted my mother, her reaction only confirmed what I had feared the most. The way she paled, the way her hands gripped the kitchen counter as though she needed something solid to hold onto—it was all the answer I needed.

I dreamed of my father’s study door, of the way the key always sat in his pocket. I dreamed of the attic, of the cigar box I had once found, of the photograph of the girl with the haunting eyes. I dreamed of the names in his notebook, of Katherine Wells and the others whose stories I now carried like a second skin. And worst of all, I dreamed of my father, standing at the foot of my bed, his face hidden in shadow, whispering my name.

At first, I told myself I didn’t need answers. What did it matter now? My father’s crimes were exposed. He was behind bars. The world knew the truth.

But the questions wouldn’t let me rest.

How many names were in that notebook? How many lives had he touched in ways I could never fathom? And how much had my mother known?

That last question haunted me the most. Because even after everything, she still refused to talk about it. She avoided my questions, her answers clipped, her eyes hollow. She wanted to pretend our lives had not unraveled, that we could somehow stitch together the pieces of our shattered reality and move forward.

But I couldn’t move forward until I knew the full truth.

So I started searching.

I revisited the attic, digging through the boxes my father had tucked away. I scoured news articles, piecing together the gaps in the official reports. I reached out to people I never thought I would—the families of the victims, the detectives who had worked the case, the reporters who had followed my father’s trial.

And what I found only deepened the horror.

There were more names than I had ever imagined. More women whose lives had been stolen, more families who had been left with nothing but questions and grief.

And there was something else. Something worse.

A name I had never seen before.

A name that shouldn’t have been there.

A name that connected my father’s past to mine in a way I wasn’t ready to face.