Chapter 5

She turned to the guests with an embarrassed smile and explained that ever since I had come home, I'd been unable to accept Freya as an adopted daughter and had been bullying her relentlessly.

Freya's breakdown today, she said, was clearly my fault.

I seized the moment and wrestled back control, shoved her to the floor, and turned to Mr. Brown with a cold, flat stare:

"Dad. When exactly are you planning to finish moving the company assets? When are you going to get rid of this old woman so you can bring my real mom home and finally have the family you actually want?"

Mrs. Brown hadn't expected the daughter she'd adored to push her to the ground.

It took her a long moment to process it. She pressed a hand to her chest and stared at me, her lips moving:

"Freya... what did you just..."

Freya was fighting me with everything she had. I bore down and held her back, took control of her hands, and cast the contents of her phone onto the big screen at the front of the hall.

Mrs. Brown stared at the image on that screen — Mr. Brown with his arm around another woman, the three of them posed like a perfect little family — and the blood drained from her face.

"Honestly, you've only got yourself to blame for being so easy to use. If you weren't loaded, why would my dad have stayed with you this long?"

"The one my dad has always loved is my mother, Laura."

"To give me a better life, my dad deliberately switched me and Caitlin at birth. He had her abandoned out in the woods."

I let myself laugh until I nearly doubled over:

"The precious daughter you've been raising and spoiling for twenty-two years is your husband's illegitimate child. She's his mistress's daughter."

"And you — you went and sent your own biological daughter to prison. For her."

"You killed your own flesh and blood with your own hands."

Every word landed like a hammer blow directly to her chest.

She turned to look at Mr. Brown, whose face had gone the color of ash. She murmured to herself, barely audible:

"That can't be real... none of this is real..."

She pulled herself up from the floor and latched onto my wrist with both hands:

"Freya, tell me. Tell me right now that everything you just said was a lie."

"It was Caitlin, wasn't it? That vicious girl did something to you, made you say all of that!"

No one answered her.

Because the answer was staring everyone in the face — Freya looked almost identical to the woman Mr. Brown had his arm around in that photo.

I didn't bother engaging with any of them. I just kept casting more files from Freya's phone onto the big screen.

Photos of her with various men. A hospital report confirming her STD diagnosis. A message thread showing her ordering the guards to have me beaten to death.

And then — Brandon's recent medical report confirming a diagnosis of low sperm count.

One bombshell after another. The media in the room were ecstatic, cameras clicking and flashing in a relentless barrage.

Brandon snapped at the staff to kill the screen, then grabbed my wrist:

"Freya, Caitlin did something to you, right? She's the one behind all of this?"

John and Mrs. Brown both chimed in — saying I had always been vicious, that all of this so-called evidence was obviously something I had fabricated.

I looked at the three of them, cold and still.

Even with everything laid out in front of them, they still chose to believe in Freya. Still chose to call me the villain.

It was almost funny.

I controlled Freya's body and laughed until the tears nearly came.

I pointed at them and screamed:

"Caitlin is already dead!"

"You people killed her. Every single one of you."

Mrs. Brown fired back immediately:

"She's just spiteful. She resents her own family, so she's been pulling strings behind the scenes, setting all of this up to humiliate us!"

John added:

"Exactly. We made sure she was well taken care of in there. Prison was practically a vacation for her—"

He stopped himself. He'd said too much.

Every guest in that room was sharp enough to know when something didn't add up.

The next moment, a hesitant voice rose from somewhere in the crowd:

"I heard there was a bullying death at that prison last week. That wasn't... Caitlin Brown, was it? Is she actually dead? Does that mean all of this is real?"