Chapter 1

The family's sickly little darling, their real daughter, was barely back in the door before she used her own recognition banquet to brand me, the adopted one, a corporate spy.

Faced with a screen full of evidence, Carly Gilbert pleaded for me, her eyes red:

"Mom, Dad, don't blame my sister. It's my fault for coming home so suddenly. And please make Dad give the shares back to me."

"My sister was just so afraid of losing this family that she lost her head for a moment and sold company secrets to a rival."

Two sentences. That was all it took for her to nail the crime to me, right down to a motive that left no gap.

In my last life, when my adoptive father demanded answers, I fought desperately to deny that I had sold out the company.

But the tech department quickly proved that the files really had been exported from my account, and the emails really had gone out under my name.

My adoptive father stripped me of my position. My fiancé broke off our engagement in front of everyone.

After I was thrown out of the Gilbert house, my birth mother received an anonymous notice that I was going to prison, and died of a heart attack that same night.

By the time I dug up proof that Carly was moving assets and falsifying the books,

she lured me to the old warehouse to fetch what she called the original ledgers.

When the fire went up, she stood on the other side of the iron door and smiled, innocent as anything.

"Once my sister's nothing but ash, she can never steal my family again."

When I opened my eyes, I was back at the recognition banquet.

Watching Carly huddle in our adoptive mother's arms, sobbing and pretending to faint, I turned on the voice recorder on my phone.

"Don't rush to pass out. First tell everyone which company I sold the files to, and how much I got for them."

"…"

Carly clutched the stuffed rabbit in her arms, tears rolling down one after another.

"Sister, how can you ask me that? Company names, money, all of it, it sounds so scary."

"I only know what the tech uncle said, that you sent the files to someone outside. And Dad said doing that would destroy the company."

She spoke as if frightened, but with those soft words she pinned the most damning charge squarely on me.

I looked up at the big screen. This time I didn't scramble to deny it the way I had before.

To make the leak of trade secrets stick, they had deliberately displayed the records of me sending the formula and the client list.

But no one noticed that the emails also carried the original quality-inspection reports, along with several sets of internal financial books.

I swept my eyes over the room and spoke clearly.

"Which one of the tech staff told Carly the recipient was a rival company?"

Tech Director Leon Lawrence stood beside the screen, a film of cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.

"What we can confirm at this point is that the relevant files were exported from Lesley Gilbert's internal account and sent through an encrypted mailbox."

"But the emails were processed with special technical methods, so for now we can't confirm the actual recipient."

"If you can't confirm it, then on what grounds do you say it was a rival company?"

I stepped forward, my gaze fixed on him.

"Or did someone brief you ahead of time and tell you to keep the story going?"

Leon's lips trembled. His eyes flicked to Carly on instinct, then darted away again.

The next second, the children's health monitor on Carly's wrist suddenly began beeping.

She clapped her hands over her ears at once and shrank into our adoptive mother's arms like a startled thing.

"Mommy, my head is so dizzy, I can't breathe…"

Our adoptive mother pulled her close in a hurry, patting her back with practiced ease.

My fiancé, Silas Delgado, quickly moved to shield Carly.

"Lesley, the evidence is already up on the screen. You're cornering a sick girl with your questions. What's the point?"

It was like this in my last life too.

Whenever Carly ran into a question she couldn't answer, her body would conveniently have an episode.

Everyone rushed to comfort her, and my questions were never pressed again.

This time I picked up the laser pointer on the table and aimed it at the big screen.

"Of course there's a point. Illegally exporting company files and selling trade secrets to a competitor are two completely different things."

"For the first, you have operation logs. For the second, all Carly has is her mouth."

My adoptive father slammed a hand down on the table.

"Lesley! Are you saying you didn't export these files?"

The whole room went silent all at once.

Carly lifted her face from our adoptive mother's arms too, watching me through blurred tears.

They were all waiting for me to deny it.

The moment I denied it, the tech department could throw the logs in my face.

But I met my adoptive father's eyes and spoke calmly.

"I did export the files. And I sent the emails, too."