wouldn’t let me eat any.
(84)
A few minutes later, Micah started barking and running around frantically. The servants
couldn’t catch him. He ran in circles, then
collapsed, convulsing and foaming at the
mouth. He was dead.
A servant screamed. “Poison! Micah’s been
poisoned!”
The house erupted in chaos.
Money talks. Within an hour, the tests confirmed it. Rat poison. In the pork buns.
Not Dad. He wasn’t that stupid. And no matter how distant he’d been, he wouldn’t poison his
own daughter, especially now.
Security footage revealed the culprit. Tiffany.
While everyone had been focused on Justin and
く
me, Tiffany had slipped out of the auditorium, taken a cab home, and poisoned the buns while
Dad was researching steaming times online.
She’d sent the chef away on an errand, then
laced the buns with rat poison she’d bought on
the way. She’d then taken another cab and
vanished.
If Micah hadn’t taken that bun…
Dad, his face like thunder, ordered everyone to find Tiffany. He called his employees, telling them to drop everything and join the search.
Just then, Mom walked in, holding a velvet box. She looked gaunt, her fingers bandaged.
She walked straight towards me, her eyes soft.
My suspicion was confirmed. She was reborn
too.
Dad exploded. He threw a poisoned bun at her
feet. “Look what your precious daughter did!
<
She tried to poison Ashley! If Micah hadn’t
eaten that bun, our daughter would be dead! I’ll
make her pay for this! Trying to poison.
someone at her age! She’s a menace!”
Mom stood frozen, her expression blank, her
eyes unfocused.
She continued walking towards me, opened the
box, and revealed a stunning diamond necklace.
Even in the dim light, the huge diamond
sparkled.
Dad, remembering Tiffany’s request for al
necklace, was even angrier. “You made her a
necklace? After this? I’ll strangle her with it!”
Mom, as if deaf, reached me and fastened the
necklace around my neck. Her hands were
shaking.
She stared at me, her gaze almost obsessive.
<
10:59
Dad’s phone rang. He answered, then roared,
“Find her! Find that ungrateful brat!” He
stumbled, and Justin and Ethan rushed to
support him.
84
Dad regained his balance and walked over to
Mom, playing a recording from his phone. It
was one of the bullies, confessing in juvenile detention. Tiffany had paid them to target me, telling them she’d pay them even more if I… disappeared.
Dad, Justin, and Ethan’s eyes turned red, their
fists clenched.
Dad glared at Mom. “Do you hear that? Do you know what your daughter went through? She was beaten, tormented, almost killed, and you were protecting that…that monster!”
“You think a necklace can make up for all this? You gave birth to her, but you didn’t raise her.
You enabled her, you protected the person who
tormented your own daughter!”
He broke down, sobbing. “It’s not just you.
We’re all guilty. We don’t deserve to be her
family. She was right. She shouldn’t have come
back. We’re not her family. We’re murderers.
We killed our own daughter…”
Justin and Ethan were crying too.
Two people weren’t crying. Mom and me.
I watched them coldly, listening as they
recounted the horrors of my past life. The pain
was sharp, but I had no tears left. I’d cried them
all last time.
Mom just stared at me, her gaze vacant. As I
turned to leave, I heard her retch. She coughed
up blood. Again and again. Then she collapsed.
Dad turned the city upside down looking for
く
Tiffany. After New Year’s, they found her in a
seedy clinic, riddled with a…nasty disease.
Dad rushed there. I followed. He slapped her
repeatedly, his face contorted with rage.
Tiffany shrieked. “Why are you hitting me? I’m
your princess! What did I do wrong? Why did
you bring Ashley back? She should have stayed
lost! Why did she have to take everything from
me?”
“We raised you like our own, gave you
everything, and you tried to have our daughter
killed? You’re asking what you did wrong?
Where’s your conscience?!” Dad’s fury
escalated. He grabbed a nearby broom and
started hitting her.
Tiffany screamed and passed out.
Dad wanted to press charges, to send her to
prison like the other bullies. But before he could
く
gather enough evidence, Tiffany died. Her
disease…it wasn’t a pleasant death.
Mom was never the same. She either stared at
me, or at my pictures, or she locked herself in
her workshop, making jewelry for me, her
bandaged fingers constantly working, oblivious
to the pain. If anyone tried to stop her, she’d
faint, muttering in her delirium, “Tiffany, you’re
a monster…Ashley…my daughter…”
I transferred schools, using Dad’s money,
moving thousands of miles away. I refused to
let any of them come with me. Or visit. They
tiptoed around me, afraid to upset me. I took
the company shares, the money they sent. Only
one person insisted on coming with me. Jake.
I went to college, got my master’s, started a
business. Jake stayed by my side.
I used my earnings, and the money from the
Millers, to open orphanages in every city I lived
((
84
<
- in. I gave those children the love I’d never received. My orphanages had one rule: If a child, adopted or reunited with their birth family,
felt unwanted or mistreated, they could always come back. No questions asked.
Jake and I got married, had kids, built our own family.
I didn’t see the Millers for decades. Not even
Justin, who remained a star for years. I only
saw him on screen.
Years later, a lawyer contacted me, asking me
to sign for a vast inheritance: stocks,
properties, everything. Dad and Mom had
passed away, leaving everything to me.
(The End)
