It was the cemetery owner. He let out a deep sigh of pity, lamenting to himself.
“Alas, poor girl. Not only did she get brain cancer, but she also offended someone, leading to erasing one’s legal identity, so she can’t buy a plot. I wonder how she’s doing now.”
Julian seemed so used to being deceived that he merely thought the owner’s words were just another one of my ploys for attention.
After a long while, looking at the jewelry set in his hand, he let out a cold, mocking sneer.
“Tell her that this kind of stunt won’t soften my heart at all. It will only make me despise her more.”
“Tell her not to play pretend so hard that she actually ends up dead one day.”
After hanging up, he casually tossed the jewelry box in his hand to a beggar on the side of the road.
Julian couldn’t understand it. It was one thing that she lacked discipline and fought with other kids at the orphanage.
He had brought her home, wanting to treat her well, wanting to give her the best of everything and provide her with a true sense of security.
But why did she still refuse to change her ways?
She was either bullying Corey or feeding him all sorts of lies.
Julian felt a profound sense of powerlessness.
He sat in the ancestral hall for a long time.
Before his parents died, he had promised them that he would definitely find his missing sister.
He had done it.
But he hadn’t managed to fix her unruly and willful personality. Standing before his parents’ memorial plaque, he felt deeply guilty.
He swore that he would set Chloe straight, that he would discipline her into the obedient daughter they had always hoped for.
Over the past few days, Julian had tailored a flawless plan on how to discipline Chloe.
Nodding in satisfaction, he was just about to instruct his secretary to go find Chloe.
When he received a phone call from the police.
“Are you a family member of Chloe?”
“She passed away from her illness on the yacht, and her body has already been sent to the morgue.”
Right after, an address was sent over.
Julian stared at the phone number on the screen, lost in a daze for a long time.
The number genuinely belonged to the police station; they couldn’t possibly be playing along with Chloe’s act…
His nerves stretched taut, Julian sped all the way to the hospital.
Along the way, he kept trying to comfort himself.
She loved to lie so much; this time might not be real either.
He exhaled deeply, telling himself not to worry.
But that was until he saw the decaying face beneath the white sheet.
Around her neck still hung the christening locket he had given her years ago.
In an instant, Julian’s legs gave way, and he collapsed to his knees with a heavy thud.
“How… how is this possible?”
He looked up at the people beside him, lost and helpless, asking with desperate paranoia.
“Did Chloe hire you to do this? Did she?”
“If you just tell me the truth, I’ll pay each of you ten times the price.”
But everyone in the room just kept their heads down; no one spoke a word.
Until a doctor broke the dead silence, handing Julian an autopsy report.
“This is her cause of death.”
“Terminal brain cancer.”
“And there are dozens of scars on her body…”
Julian took the report with trembling hands, and upon seeing the words “Terminal Brain Cancer,” he finally broke down, clutching his head as muffled sobs tore from his throat.
Why?
How could she get brain cancer when she was perfectly fine?
Why were there wounds all over her body?
He had given those human traffickers a massive sum of money, and they had promised him they wouldn’t hurt Chloe, that they would only make her taste a bit of life’s hardships…
He hadn’t even had the chance to bring her back home yet.
At this thought, his suppressed sobs broke into an agonizing wail.
The sound echoed back and forth in the dead, silent space, chilling to the bone.
It felt as though it could shatter my very soul.
For some reason, I felt a phantom ache spreading all over my body.
I was dead—shouldn’t he be happy?
So why was he crying for me?
Didn’t he hate me more than anything?
Julian’s hair turned white overnight; he looked as though he had aged over a decade.
His mind slipped into a trance, and with a vacant, shattered expression, he held a funeral for me.
After that, he completely fell apart, spending every day clutching my only photograph and staring blankly into space.
Sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing like a fool—he truly looked like a madman.
