Chapter 4

"Oh my god, is this real? The future Mrs. Vance has such a wild private life?"

"Miss Iris, is this really your ex-boyfriend? Did you dump him and pretend to be innocent just to marry into wealth?"

Faced with the whispers of the guests and the aggressive flashing of the reporters' cameras, I simply looked up at the comments.

[FL, just get down on your knees and beg for forgiveness. The Vance family won't do anything to you. They're friends with your parents. Just beg and apologize!]

Instead, I looked at the man and said coldly, "Talk is cheap. Show the video."

The man glanced at my dad, Richard, then grabbed his phone and ran to the tech booth. After a brief hushed conversation with the staff, the massive projector screen behind the stage began to play a self-recorded video.

The next second, the entire hall erupted into shocked screams.

"This is disgusting! One woman with so many men... ugh!"

But someone with sharp eyes immediately shouted, "Wait, that woman on screen doesn't look like Iris at all. She looks exactly like her sister, Chloe!"

I stood on the stage, watching my parents scramble to block the reporters' cameras while the guests gossiped loudly.

Beside me, Julian reached out and held my hand. "It seems the rumors about my fiancée are completely baseless. However, Mr. and Mrs. Lin, perhaps you care to explain why your statements contradicted the facts?"

"The video must have been deepfaked!" Eleanor rushed to the stage, trembling. "Our Chloe would never do something like this!"

She grabbed my arm and whispered frantically, "Iris, you have to help your sister! Tell them the girl in the video is you! Otherwise, how is Chloe ever going to marry into a good family?!"

Looking at my mother's anxious face—so desperately protective of Chloe, yet so willing to throw me under the bus moments ago—the contrast was sickening.

I smiled, holding the microphone directly to her mouth. "Mom, why don't you say that a bit louder? How exactly do you want me to help Chloe take the blame?"

Hearing the guests start to murmur about Eleanor's extreme favoritism toward her adopted daughter, her face flushed red with anger. She pointed a shaking finger at me. "You!"

Then, she spat out, "Do you even respect us as your parents?!"

[Iris's parents actually love her so much. If she continues to be ungrateful, the Lin family won't help her when the Vance family goes broke. She’ll end up working at a cheap strip club!]

The comments warned me again.

So, if being "disobedient" meant I would regret it forever, then I was absolutely going to expose Chloe’s ugly side to the world.

"Everyone," I said, my voice echoing clearly over the microphone, silencing the room. "The background of this video looks exactly like one of the suites in this very hotel. In fact, I just had the hotel management pull up the security footage."

"Why don't we all take a trip to Room 902? We can see if my dear sister, whom we haven't seen all evening, is in there. Let's see who really has the wild private life—me, or my parents' beloved Chloe."

The moment I mentioned "902," Richard's face turned pale. "No! Absolutely not!"

"Dad, why do you look like you already know what's inside Room 902?"

[What is the FL talking about? Her parents love her the most!]

[She's such a backstabbing bitch, I'm dropping this novel!]

[Don't worry, guys. The FL is going to beg her parents for forgiveness soon. Chloe isn't even in 902. When they find nothing, Iris will have to crawl back to her parents.]

"Someone tried to ruin my engagement party," I said, smiling at my father. "Of course I have to prove my innocence. Or would you rather the world believe your biological daughter is a whore?"

Richard tried to step forward to stop me, but Julian cut him off with a chilling glare.

"Until this is resolved, no one leaves this hotel."