Chapter 2

Early the next morning.

Stephanie came back to the mansion with red eyes, glaring at me like she wanted to devour me alive.

"You cursed little thing!"

The moment she walked in, she pointed at my face and started screaming.

"Penelope never so much as scraped her skin growing up, and the second you come back she suffers like this!"

"You're nothing but an evil spirit come to collect a debt!"

I shrank into the corner of the sofa, a thermos still cradled in my hands.

To smooth things over, I'd gotten up at four in the morning.

I'd stood over the stove in the kitchen, simmering bone broth for four full hours.

Swallowing my hurt, I forced myself to stand and held the thermos out to her.

"Mom, please don't be angry."

"I made pork rib soup to help my sister recover, and to warm your stomach too..."

Stephanie didn't even glance at it. She swung her hand and slapped me hard across the face.

Smack!

My head snapped to the side, my ears ringing.

"You still have the nerve to bring up bones?"

Hearing those two words, Stephanie's face twisted with fury.

"Penelope is in agony right now because of bone hyperplasia, and you deliberately made bone broth—are you mocking her?!"

"You vicious little beast, you ungrateful wretch!"

She snatched the thermos and hurled it at me, the scalding bone broth splashing straight across my chest.

"Ah!"

I screamed in pain as my chest and arms flushed red, swelling into blisters in an instant.

Stephanie didn't spare my sorry state a single look. She turned and hurried back to the hospital.

That afternoon, Penelope was discharged in a wheelchair.

The doctor said her bones were too dense, and only conservative treatment was possible.

The moment she saw me burned in the corner, her eyes reddened.

"Mom, I don't want to see her."

Penelope slumped weakly in her wheelchair, pointing at me.

"Lock her in the basement. If I can't have a good day, then neither can she."

Sebastian had just come in, frowning as he loosened his tie. There wasn't a trace of pity in his eyes when he looked at me.

"Get her in the basement and lock it up. Let her think about what she's done. Tomorrow, at the Gilbert family's dinner, she absolutely will not embarrass us."

Stephanie immediately called in two bodyguards.

Ignoring my burns and my crying pleas, they dragged me into the dark basement like a dead dog.

The basement reeked of mildew, and there wasn't even a bed.

I curled up on the concrete floor, the pain in my wounds making me hiss for breath.

Before long, the basement door opened.

A bodyguard pushed Penelope in, and Stephanie was holding a document in her hand.

"Sign it." Stephanie threw the document in my face.

"This is the declaration renouncing all inheritance rights to the Henson Group."

"You little jinx, you don't deserve a single cent of the Henson family's money."

I stared at the document, tears falling in fat drops.

"Mom, I don't want money. I only want you to look at me a little more..."

"I'm your own daughter."

"Shut up!" Stephanie cut me off, her face full of disgust.

"I, Stephanie Fox, have only one daughter, and that's Penelope. The only socialite I poured my heart and soul into raising is Penelope."

"You? You're only fit to be an invisible nobody in this family, someone who never sees the light of day."

Penelope toyed with her freshly done manicure in the wheelchair, sneering.

"Did you hear that? What does blood matter? The only one the elite metropolitan circle recognizes is me, the eldest Henson daughter."

"Sign it, quick. The Henson family is rich and powerful—we might still spare you a mouthful of food."

The two bodyguards stepped forward and forcibly pinned down my shoulders.

They pried my fingers open and jammed the pen into my hand.

I looked into Stephanie's cold, emotionless eyes.

The last shred of my fantasy about family love shattered like a bubble.

I lifted my head. "Fine, I'll sign..."

"I bless, I bless the Henson family fortune to take root underground, where no one can ever shake it!"

Penelope grabbed the document and burst into triumphant laughter.

"Smart of you to know your place."

"Trash is trash. One little scare and she tucks her tail right between her legs."

The words had barely left her mouth.

Outside, a violent wind suddenly howled, and the clear sky filled with dark clouds.

Then the rain came pouring down, thunder crashing overhead.

Stephanie's pupils shrank sharply, and she grabbed the wall to barely keep herself standing.

"An earthquake?!"