Aurora was kicked out.
became the sole center of the family’s universe.
My “illness” fluctuated under their meticulous care.
One day, I’d overhear that a project at the company wasn’t going well, and I’d immediately suffer from hear
alpitations.
The next, I’d see a maid looking glum, and I’d be struck with insomnia.
The entire family walked on eggshells, terrified of accidentally upsetting my glass heart.
Julian cancelled all non-essential social events to come home and spend time with me.
My father would call from board meetings just to ask if I was in a good mood.
My mother barely left my side, personally brewing soups and cooking my meals.
James started visiting more frequently.
He never mentioned Aurora. He just sat with me quietly, telling me lighthearted jokes or bringing me little rinkets to cheer me up.
knew that the scales in his heart had tipped completely in my favor.
Aurora wasn’t going to be exiled without a fight.
She tried desperately to contact my parents and brother, crying and repenting, saying she knew she was
wrong.
But no one responded.
Chapter
The doctor had said that any news about her could be a trigger for me.
For my sake, my family hardened their hearts and blocked all of her contact information.
Desperate, she decided to make one last gamble at the company’s annual charity gala.
It was a star-studded event, and as the hosts, the Sterling family was in the spotlight.
I appeared in the ballroom on my father’s arm, wearing a magnificent star-dusted gown that James had picked out for me.
My arrival caused a small stir.
Everyone had heard the rumors about the Sterling’s long-lost, sickly daughter.
My pale complexion and fragile demeanor perfectly matched the stories.
Halfway through the evening, the lights dimmed, and the large screen on the stage lit up.
Everyone assumed it was a special part of the program.
But the person who appeared on the screen was me.
In the video, I was in the family garden, laughing and chatting with a gardener.
I looked perfectly healthy, without a trace of sickness. I even reached out to playfully bat at a butterfly, smili ng like a child.
The scene then cut to me in my room, humming a song while watering my succulents.
The carefree, relaxed girl in the video looked nothing like a “mentally fragile” patient.
The hall erupted in whispers.
Everyone was looking at me with strange, speculative eyes.
“Didn’t they say she was on her deathbed? She looks fine to me.”
“It must be an act, right? The games of the rich… what kind of drama is this?”
My parents’ faces turned pale with shock and embarrassment.
Just then, Aurora walked onto the stage, dressed in a white gown like a vengeful angel.
She held a microphone, her eyes brimming with tears. “Everyone, I know you’re all confused. Tonight, I am going to expose a liar for who she truly is!”
She pointed at me, her voice shrill. “Lily Sterling! She’s not sick at all! It’s all an act! She used her fake illness to win my parents’ sympathy and kick me out of my own home! She is the truly manipulative, evil one!”
The flashbulbs of every camera in the room turned on me.
I stood frozen, my body trembling slightly, like a frightened deer.
My parents tried to rush to my side, but I stopped them with a look.
I looked at Aurora on the stage, at the “healthy” version of myself on the screen, and at the contemptuous, entertained faces in the audience.
I smiled.
It was a smile full of despair and self-mockery.
Then, I looked up at the screen and whispered a single sentence.
My voice wasn’t loud, but the microphone on my dress carried it throughout the entire hall.
“So, I’m only allowed to smile when I think no one is watching.”
“So, even a moment of happiness is a sin for me.”
As the words left my lips, the video on the screen kept playing.
This was something Aurora hadn’t anticipated.
The footage she had given the TV station ended there.
In the video, after my smile in the garden faded, I turned to the gardener.
“Thank you, Mr. Gable,” I said, my voice heavy with sadness. “Talking to you… it helps me forget for a little while.”
“But then I remember that my sister is still out there, suffering, and that my parents are so worried because of me… and my heart feels like it’s being crushed by a stone.”
The scene changed again.
In my room, after watering the plants, I put down the watering can and walked to the window, staring at the sky.
“If I died,” I whispered to myself, “wouldn’t everyone be free?”
“My sister could come home. My parents wouldn’t have to worry about me. My brother wouldn’t have to walk on eggshells around me.”
“That would be for the best.”
The video ended.
The hall was dead silent.
If the first half of the video was “evidence,” the second half was the most devastating rebuttal imaginable.
It painted me as a kind, forbearing, tragic figure who bore her suffering in silence and was even willing to die
to grant everyone else peace.
And Aurora, the one who had maliciously edited the video and publicly attacked the fragile, long-lost heiress, was exposed as a petty, vindictive clown.
Aurora stood on the stage, her face ashen.
< } < 5 F
She didn’t know that the TV station employee she had bribed had been counter-bribed by James for double the price.
The trap she thought she had set was, from the very beginning, for herself.
I looked at her, and my tears finally broke free.
“Sister, why… why would you do this to me?”
“Do you… do you really have to push me to my death before you’re satisfied?”
I clutched my chest, coughed violently, and a spray of blood erupted from my lips as my body went limp and collapsed.
It wasn’t real.
It was a blood packet I’d hidden in my mouth earlier.
But to everyone else, it looked like I had been so devastated that I had coughed up blood and was on the brink of death.
“Lily!”
“Ambulance! Someone call an ambulance!”
The entire ballroom descended into chaos.
As I was lifted onto a stretcher, I caught a glimpse of Aurora through the crowd. She was being dragged away by security, her face a blank, gray mask, muttering over and over, “No… it wasn’t supposed to be like this…”
Game over.
6
