Chapter 3

His voice came out low, like he was fighting to hold something down.

"That funding I told you about fell through. We can't keep the house. It's going to auction. I'm sorry…"

Listening to him, my throat went tight.

For this project, my husband had staked everything we owned, working day and night without rest.

They'd been one round of funding away from success.

Sabina's dog-abuse video had wrecked all of it.

I opened my phone.

The hashtag "Middle-Aged Woman Abuses Dog" had shot to the top of the trending list.

Sabina's livestream sat at number one on the local ranking.

The comment section had gone rabid with abuse.

Someone had even dug up my husband's company and his project.

"For f's sake! Trash like this, and she's got a rich husband! Everybody pull together, take their company down!"

Under it, countless "+1"s.

In my past life, it was exactly these people driving the narrative that left the company buried in unsold stock.

The investors began doubting my husband's character and simply tore up the deal.

To save a company on the edge of bankruptcy, he drank until his stomach bled.

They made him crawl to them, degrade himself just to be considered.

And in the end, they only treated him as a joke. Not one of them actually invested.

Even then, he never blamed me, not once. He carried all of it in silence.

One rainy night, he finally couldn't bear it, and stepped off the forty-second floor of his office building.

After that, our son never spoke again.

A violent pounding hit the door. Someone was shouting outside.

"You sick animal abuser! Get out here!"

I gripped my phone and drew a deep breath.

"Keep the company running, keep the investors steady. Leave the rest to me. Trust me."

I closed the bedroom door, strode to the entryway, and yanked the front door wide open.

I stepped forward fast and slapped Sabina hard across the face, left then right.

The animal-rights crowd that had been screaming a second ago went silent, watching me warily, but not one of them dared come closer.

In that brief hush, I spoke straight into the camera.

"How your dog died, you know damn well yourself, don't you?!"

Sabina's tears came harder.

She lifted the mangled body of the dog up to the camera.

"You all saw it. It was her. She killed my baby."

"That day, while my dog was out by the door, she fed him rat poison, and then hacked him up like this, cut by cut."

The livestream and the crowd both exploded at once.

"Psycho killer!"

"Scum of the human race!"

I fixed my eyes on Sabina's and said it slow, word by word.

"I said I didn't kill the dog. Are you deaf?"

Wallis came forward and lowered her voice.

"Honey, this has blown up way too big. These people look vicious to me, not the kind you want to cross."

"Whatever really happened, just back down first, apologize, and let the heat die down."

"It's for your own good, and your family's!"

I let out a cold laugh.

"I didn't do it. Why on earth would I apologize?"

Wallis's face turned ugly.

"Look at the mood they're in. If somebody ends up with a broken arm or leg, you're the one who gets hurt."

Sabina wailed louder.

"Ms. Finch, I know your family eats dog all the time. To you a dog is just a plaything, killing one isn't even a crime, you don't have to answer for it."

"But how can you be so cold-blooded? I raised this dog for three years. Why would I use his life to frame you?"

"What would framing you even get me?"

In my past life, it was this line of hers that turned the whole crowd against me.

She'd stamped the "dog-eater" label on me and made it stick.

After that, no matter how I explained, no one believed me. It only pulled more traffic to her.

This time, faced with the frame-up, I wasn't going to say one more word.

I took out my phone and hit the call button for the police.

"Hello, someone is deliberately attacking my reputation and spreading false information about me online with malicious intent."