“You almost got us killed—what’s this about?”
Hearing Emily Evans’s words, Judge Williams narrowed his eyes, his gaze locking firmly on me.
Before I could reply, Emily blurted out excitedly,
“Your Honor, could you please retrieve the black bottle I left in my drawer when I was alive?”
In the blink of an eye, a small black bottle appeared in the Judge’s hand.
A label clung to it—rat poison.
“Your Honor, this is proof that Sophia Evans poisoned us!”
The Judge turned to me again.
“Is this true?”
“Yes,” I answered calmly, “but she got one thing wrong. I never intended to kill the whole family. The only one I wanted dead—was her.”
My eyes flashed with venom.
“But fate wasn’t on the others’ side. They drank from the poisoned water by mistake.”
I pulled my gaze back, my tone light, as if speaking of something ordinary.
At that, the crowd erupted in fury. They hurled eggs, cabbage, even foul-smelling liquids at me.
“How can a woman be so vicious, so utterly vile? Someone like her deserves a thousand cuts, her tongue ripped out, thrown into fire and ice, boiled in oil—let her suffer every torment in Hell!”
I stood drenched and sticky, yet my expression was full of self-righteous certainty.
“I’m not wrong. They owed me this.”
Emily stepped forward again, tears streaming down her face.
“Do you even know how Mom and Dad lived after you died?”
“Even though I was the only one in our family who made it into the top university in the country, I still couldn’t attend. Why? Because my tuition was used to pay for your cremation, your funeral, and your cemetery plot.”
At that moment, the Judge conjured a long receipt in his hand.
Tens of thousands of dollars—enough for a grand funeral, though a simple burial would never have cost so much.
“Not only that,” Emily continued, her voice shaking, “but the family went into debt to cover it. To pay it back, Mom—with her rheumatism—went fishing every day for money. Dad, with his bad legs, worked in the freezing cold storage warehouses, hauling crates every single day…”
Linda Evans’s eyes welled up as she gripped Emily’s sleeve, shaking her head desperately, signaling her not to go on.
But Emily’s eyes were scarlet with fury.
“No—I have to say it. I need to tell it all!”
“Even your belongings, Mom refused to part with them! The luxury jewelry, the shoes, the clothes—if she had sold them, it would’ve eased the financial burden. But no, she kept every piece as a keepsake, not selling a single one!”
The crowd’s stares cut into me like knives.
“Vain! Pretending to be rich when she had nothing!”
But I was unfazed.
In fact, seeing their tears only made me laugh hysterically.
“Poverty is the original sin. Who told you to be poor? Who told you to give birth to me? If you’d given me to a wealthy family instead, wouldn’t I have been better off?”
Finally, someone in the crowd snapped, charging at me with fists raised, ready to strike me down.
But just as the blow was about to fall, Robert Evans stopped him.
His hair was pure white, his face aged decades beyond his years.
“Sophia,” he said softly, “no matter what happened, you are still my daughter. You’re not wrong. The fault lies with me—for not raising you well.”
Someone else in the crowd broke into sobs.
“When I was alive, my father said the same to me. Back then I thought he was just nagging… but now I regret not listening…”
But I only laughed.
“Old fool. What an act.”
