Chapter 6

When the footage ended, I sat in silence for a long time.

All of it settled into one low, cold scoff.

Clive Sanchez, while you were burning through every scheme to play me for a fool, did it ever cross your mind that you were someone else's toy in someone else's palm?

Right then, his message came in.

*Come over like a good girl and I'll drop the charges immediately.*

*People online have already started digging into your family. You wouldn't want your mother to have no peace even in death, would you?*

My eyes went cold, and I killed the screen.

Clive Sanchez, at your proposal, I'll make sure you understand that the one who gets no peace is you.

When I reached the proposal venue, the place was packed shoulder to shoulder, cameras propped up everywhere.

The moment I appeared, every stunned and contemptuous gaze swung onto me at once.

"Why is she even here? Shameless."

"What shame does a slut have? She's probably up to something."

"She's not here to wreck the proposal, is she? Should we stop her?"

The crowd stirred, restless. I quickened my steps, and someone shoved me hard.

My injured hand slammed into the ground, pain shooting straight through me. I lifted my head and found Mrs. Sanchez, always so gentle before, glaring down at me with a face like thunder.

"Millicent Maddox, you ruined Jade — then you twisted everything so I'd turn on her, and dumped all your spite on her!"

"And I treated you like my own daughter, you ungrateful, cold-blooded thing! To do that to Clive's older brother—"

"I did not!" My head snapped up and the words tore out of me.

At once someone shouted, "This vicious woman means to hurt Mrs. Sanchez! Stop her!"

The crowd surged in like a tide. Someone seized my hair and dragged me back, and a searing pain ripped across my scalp.

"Everyone, please, calm down!"

Clive Sanchez had watched enough of the show. He came strolling over.

The whole farce had gone out live, and the crowd's righteous fury only stamped the villain's role onto me more firmly.

Satisfaction flickered in his eyes as he raised his voice. "Millicent came here specifically to apologize to Jade. She knows she was wrong. Please, everyone, give her another chance."

Then he steadied Mrs. Sanchez. "Mom, don't be like this. Maybe there's been some misunderstanding about my brother. I don't believe Millicent would do that."

Having neatly built himself into the picture of generosity and kindness, Clive Sanchez pulled me aside, the smugness impossible to hide.

"If you'd been this obedient from the start, you wouldn't have had to apologize on a livestream."

"Here. Your good-luck pendant, to make up for it." He opened his palm. "About the same as yours, isn't it? It's not like it was worth anything. All that fuss over nothing."

I didn't take it.

His face darkened. "Not happy with this one either? Fine, I'll get you a more expensive one later, all right?"

He unfolded a sheet of paper. "Jade was worried you'd get nervous, so she wrote out a script for you. Just read off it in a bit."

The statement had me admitting, in my own words, that to win Clive Sanchez I'd put thugs up to violating Jade Jennings, and then, to keep it from coming out, that I'd threatened her and spread lies about her.

After that I'd kneel in front of her and beg for forgiveness.

And she would gently raise me to my feet and pardon my crimes.

Like that, I'd be disgraced, stripped of everything.

While they reaped everyone's praise, both fame and fortune.

What a perfect plan.

But I'd come for exactly one reason. To see that plan fall apart.

I took the script and the agreement, and under Clive Sanchez's triumphant gaze, I rolled them into a tube and whipped them hard across his face.

The venue went dead silent.

I strode straight to the main camera.

The instant I planted myself there, the romantic proposal backdrop vanished from the screen.

In its place came the surveillance footage I'd copied from the police station.

"Clive Sanchez sent me here to apologize to Jade Jennings."

"But I came to tell all of you exactly who the real culprit is, the one who violated and slandered Jade Jennings!"