Chapter 4

The next day, I was famous all over town.

My phone started ringing at dawn and never stopped, wave after wave of curses from strange numbers, hate texts stacking up.

A friend sent me a link to a short video on WeChat. The headline read:

"Cold-blooded! Millionaire heiress drives poor relatives to ruin—even her own grandmother on her knees couldn't bring her conscience back!"

I opened it. It was me, yesterday, outside the storefront.

Someone had edited it with real care and real malice. All that was left was my face, blank and unflinching, while Grandma beat me.

The aunt sitting on the ground, wailing like her heart was being torn out.

And Karl's friends, delivering their righteous little speeches about what a heartless animal I was.

My rebuttals, the footage of them smashing my property—all cut.

At the end, they'd tacked on my name, my employer, even the address of the complex where I lived.

The comments were already a slaughterhouse.

"A woman like this deserves to die! Treating her own grandmother that way!"

"Oh, she's rich, so what? Poor relatives aren't people?"

"Dox her! Socially bury her!"

The venom came in like a tide.

When I went downstairs for my car, a basin of dirty water full of rotting cabbage leaves came down from above and drenched my head.

A stranger's face flickered at an upstairs window, gloating.

At the office, every coworker looked at me like I was something foreign.

It didn't take long before my manager called me in, his face pinched with discomfort.

"Marian, you see how it is with all this attention right now… it's really bad for the company."

"Maybe you should… take a leave and rest at home for a while. We'll talk again once it blows over."

It was a firing dressed up as a favor.

I walked out the front doors. The sky was gray.

My parents called again. This time it wasn't persuasion. It was one accusation after another, straight to the face.

"Marian! Look at the mess you've made! You've even lost your job now!"

"Happy now? I'm telling you, go apologize to your uncle and the rest of them, beg them to forgive you! Otherwise you've ruined your whole life!"

I hung up and sat alone in the car.

Watching the insults keep popping up on my screen, it felt like the whole world had lined up against me.

Right then, Karl's message came through.

A photo of him in a karaoke club, a girl on each arm, with one arrogant line underneath.

"How's it taste, little sister? Now. Right now. Sign the storefront over to me."

"Make me happy and I'll post a video clearing your name, let you off the hook."

"Otherwise, I promise you, this is only the beginning."

I looked at that smug face, and that phrase, "let you off the hook."

Everything I'd swallowed—the grievance, the anger—turned in that moment into one cold, clear intent to end this.

I didn't reply.

I went home and shut myself in my room.

I pulled up every transfer record from the past five years, the lease contract for the separate warehouse I'd rented.

The video I'd taken yesterday of Karl deliberately destroying the goods, and the copy of that forged, million-dollar loan-shark mortgage contract.

All of it, one line, one document at a time, laid out clearly on the desk.

I opened the phone, went to the dial pad, and calmly pressed three numbers.

"Hello, is this the police? This is Marian Matthews."

"I want to file a formal report under my own name. Someone is suspected of forging an official government seal."

"Contract fraud, and deliberate destruction of property. The amount involved runs into the millions."

On the other end, the dispatcher's voice was steady. "Please tell me exactly what happened."

My own voice was calmer and clearer than it had ever been.

"The suspect is my cousin. Karl Matthews."