My Taboo Harem!

The doors of the county morgue swung open at 3:47 AM.

Dr. Ingrid Vance led the procession — Chief Forensic Pathologist, twenty-three years in the field, a woman who had seen more dead bodies than most people saw living ones.

Behind her came the team: two forensic technicians carrying equipment cases, a toxicologist still rubbing sleep from his eyes, a forensic photographer checking her camera settings, and a sexual assault examiner whose expression had gone hard and cold the moment she’d heard the preliminary report.

Rape. Murder. A seventeen-year-old girl thrown from a rooftop at an elite academy.

This was the kind of case that made careers, demanded thoroughness, precision, absolute dedication to uncovering the truth and could put names in textbooks, secure grants for decades, and earn quiet respect at conferences.

They were halfway to the examination room when the second group arrived.

Chief Morrison walked like a man who owned the building — which, in a sense, he did. The Chief of Police had the kind of face that belonged on campaign posters: square-jawed, silver-templed, trustworthy in that manufactured, photogenic way that made Dr. Vance’s skin crawl.

Behind him came two detectives she didn’t recognize, a man in a suit who screamed lawyer, and three officers who positioned themselves at the exits like they were expecting trouble.

“Dr. Vance.”

Morrison’s voice echoed off the sterile tile walls.

“Chief Morrison.” She didn’t stop walking. “You’re not usually present for autopsies. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“This case is being closed.”

That stopped her.

She turned slowly, her team halting behind her like a wave hitting a wall. The toxicologist and the forensic techs exchanged uneasy glances.

The photographer lowered her camera. The sexual assault examiner’s jaw tightened until the tendons in her neck stood out like cables.

“Closed?” Dr. Vance repeated. “The body arrived less than an hour ago. We haven’t even begun the examination.”

“And you won’t.” Morrison clasped his hands behind his back and he said with finality — the posture was delivering orders, not making requests. “The cause of death is suicide. The girl jumped. Case closed. No autopsy required.”

“The preliminary report mentions evidence of sexual assault. Bruising on the inner thighs. Torn clothing. Signs of—”

“There is no preliminary report.”

The words hung in the air like poison.

Dr. Vance felt something cold settle in her stomach. She had been in this business long enough to recognize the shape of what was happening — the politics, the pressure, the invisible hands reaching down from above to make inconvenient truths disappear.

“Chief Morrison,” she said carefully, “I have a legal obligation to—”

“Your legal obligation is to follow procedure.” The lawyer stepped forward, producing a folder from his briefcase. “And procedure, in cases involving minor children from prominent families, requires parental consent before any invasive examination. Consent which has been explicitly denied.”

“That’s not how—”

“Additionally,” the lawyer continued smoothly, “the family has requested immediate release of the body for cremation. Religious reasons. Time-sensitive. I have the paperwork here.”

Dr. Vance stared at the folder like it was a snake which she was sure everything in it was forged or acquired in means she couldn’t name.

“You want us to release a potential murder victim without examination. Without documentation. Without any investigation at all.”

“I want you to follow procedure.” Morrison’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “The question is whether you’re going to make this difficult.”

Silence stretched through the morgue like a living thing — thick, suffocating and hungry before another forensic technician entered the morgue lastly.

The forensic techs were looking at their shoes. The toxicologist had suddenly become very interested in the ceiling tiles. Even the sexual assault examiner — a woman Dr. Vance had seen face down gang members and serial rapists without flinching — had gone quiet.

They knew.

They all knew what this was.

And they were calculating.

“How much?”

The words came from Dr. Okonkwo, the senior forensic technician. A man with two kids in private school and a mortgage that was eating him alive. His voice was steady, professional, like he was discussing lab equipment rather than the price of a dead girl’s silence.

Morrison’s smile widened — slow, satisfied, the smile.

“Fifteen million. Split however you see fit among your team.” He gestured to the lawyer. “Deposited into offshore accounts within twenty-four hours. Untraceable. Tax-free.”

Fifteen million.

Dr. Vance watched her colleagues do the math in real time. Watched their faces shift — horror giving way to calculation, calculation giving way to something that looked almost like relief. Fifteen million split seven ways was still nearly $2.1 million each. Enough to pay off debts. Enough to send kids to college, to upgrade the house, the car, the wife’s wardrobe. Enough to finally breathe and even retire.

Enough to look away.

Enough to trade a girl’s violated body for a better life.

“And if we refuse?” The sexual assault examiner’s voice was thin. Strained. Like she already knew the answer.

One of the detectives stepped forward. His hand rested casually on his holster.

“Dr. Vance,” Morrison said, his voice almost gentle, “you have two children, don’t you? Astrid and Julian? Astrid just started at Columbia, I believe. Julian’s still in high school — Jefferson Prep, if I’m not mistaken. Lovely campus. Very safe… don’t you think.”

The threat didn’t need to be spoken.

It hung in the air like smoke filling every corner of the room and squeezing out any remaining resistance.

Dr. Vance closed her eyes.

When she opened them, her face was blank — professional, efficient, already rewriting the story in her head.

“We’ll need the paperwork processed correctly,” she said. “Death certificate. Cause of death: suicide. No mention of external injuries inconsistent with the fall.”

“Of course.”

“And the preliminary report — the one that doesn’t exist — needs to actually not exist. Every copy. Every digital file. Every note.”

“Already handled.”

“Then we have an understanding.”

Morrison extended his hand.

Dr. Vance shook it.

And just like that, Selene’s murder became a suicide, her rape became nothing, and the truth became a commodity sold for two million dollars in a county morgue at four in the morning.

The team dispersed to handle the paperwork. Morrison and his entourage retreated to the hallway to make phone calls. The morgue fell quiet except for the hum of refrigeration units and the soft scratch of pens on falsified documents.

None of them noticed the figure in the corner.

She stood in the shadow between two storage units — motionless, silent, a woman-shaped void that the eye simply refused to register. Over her shoulder hung a body wrapped in dark fabric, carried as easily as a sleeping child despite the deadweight of human remains.

She had been there the entire time.

Listening.

Watching.

Memorizing faces.

Dr. Ingrid Vance. Dr. Okonkwo. The toxicologist whose name tag read Lindqvist. The photographer. The sexual assault examiner. Morrison. The detectives. The lawyer. Every single person who had just traded a girl’s justice for money and safety.

She would remember them all.

The figure shifted slightly, adjusting the weight on her shoulder, and her gaze drifted to the examination table where a body still lay beneath a white sheet. The body that would be cremated tomorrow.

The body that everyone would believe was Selene.

The height was wrong.

Just slightly — perhaps an inch or two taller than the girl who had fallen from the rooftop. But who would notice? Who would measure? Who would question?

The face was the same.

The gender was the same.

The body was exactly as everyone remembered her.

Right?

The figure’s lips curved into a slow, cold smirk beneath the shadows that cloaked her features.

These fools… pocketing promises of a few million to cover up the truth. Selling their souls for offshore accounts and the illusion of safety. Trading a dead girl’s dignity for the privilege of sleeping soundly in their beds.

But how could she blame them?

It was human nature, after all.

Greed. Vanity. Self-preservation.

The quiet, ugly little horrors that lived in every human heart that whispered “me first” when the lights went out and made good people look away, made honest people lie, made decent people become monsters for the right price.

So, what was looking away, really?

What was not writing a single file about a single dead girl, compared to millions that would change their lives and their families’ lives forever?

What was silence, in the face of that kind of money?

What was complicity, when the alternative was death of either you or loved ones?

Right?