6
“Impossible… this is absolutely impossible…” My dad, Richard, murmured, tears streaming down his face.
I looked at their pained expressions, feeling not a ripple of emotion-no hate, no love, just
a desolate wasteland inside.
Dylan and the TheraMed executives were immediately taken into custody.
My mom, Eleanor, suddenly rushed towards me like a madwoman, grabbing my arm, crying and pleading, “Audrey! Please let your sister go! She was confused for a moment! She must have been deceived by Dylan! We’ll get down on our knees, please, we beg you, just let her go this once!”
She and my dad, Richard, once again prepared to kneel before me.
Just like a few days ago, the posture, the expression, were exactly the same. Only this time, it wasn’t to beg me to save a life, but to beg me to release a criminal.
I looked at them and suddenly found it incredibly laughable. “Let her go?” I asked, enunciating each word. “Do you think, after all this, it’s over?”
My words stunned everyone. Could there be… an even more terrifying truth?
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and when I opened them again, there was only endless sorrow and hatred. “You still insist Chloe was an innocent victim, manipulated by
others?”
“You’re wrong.”
I had the staff play the last file on the USB drive. It was a recording, captured by a voice recorder I had hidden inside a plush toy in Chloe’s room. It was Chloe and Dylan’s
conspiring conversation.
In the recording, Chloe’s voice was no longer her usual gentle and warm tone; it was filled
with malice and resentment.
“What is Audrey Stevens, anyway? She just got lucky and was born into a good family! Everything in the Stevens’ home should be mine! I’ve been a princess for eighteen years, why should she come back and take everything away from me? Mom and Dad’s love, the Stevens’ fortune, and you… they all should be mine!”
“I’m going to ruin her hands, ruin her career, and show Mom and Dad who the daughter they should truly be proud of is! I’m going to make her lose everything and send her back to her pathetic little town!”
As the recording reached this point, my parents’ faces were utterly drained of color. But something even more brutal followed.
Dylan’s voice spoke up: “Chloe, but… inducing a cerebral aneurysm with banned drugs,
the risk is too great. What if…”
Chloe chuckled coldly, cutting him off: “No risk, no reward! As long as it can ruin Audrey Stevens, allow you to rise to power, and get TheraMed’s backing, what’s a little risk? Besides, isn’t Audrey Stevens, that idiot, still there for the surgery? She cares so much about Mom and Dad; as soon as they kneel, she’ll definitely step in. Then, once her hand tremors are exposed, her reputation will be destroyed. And you, you’ll save the day, and we both win!”
“I’m gambling half my life for a future, and for Audrey Stevens to disappear completely
from my life!”
The recording ended.
The entire hall was silent.
This truth, even more devastating than the poisoning and the proxy surgery, pierced everyone’s hearts. It turned out Chloe’s illness was not an accident at all.
She had used her own life as a gamble, personally setting up the most malicious trap for
