I watched the footage to the end and said nothing for a long time.
Everything I felt finally collapsed into one low, ugly laugh.
Clive Sanchez. While you were spinning every thread to make a fool of me, did it ever once cross your mind that you were a toy in someone else's palm too?
My phone buzzed. A message from him.
【Just come quietly and I'll drop the charges.】
【The internet's already started digging into your family. You don't want your mother to have no peace even in death, do you?】
My eyes went cold as I killed the screen.
Clive, at your own proposal, I'm going to show you exactly who isn't going to get any peace.
By the time I reached the venue, the place was packed, cameras bristling from every angle.
The second I appeared, every gaze swung to me at once—shocked, contemptuous.
"Why is she here? The nerve."
"What nerve does a slut have? She's up to something, mark my words."
"She's not here to wreck the proposal, is she? Somebody stop her."
The crowd shifted, hungry for it. I quickened my steps, and someone shoved me hard.
My injured hand slammed against the floor, and the pain tore up through my wrist. I looked up to find Mrs. Sanchez, always so warm with me before, glaring down with a face like a storm.
"Millicent Maddox, you hurt Jade, and then you poisoned me against her so I'd take it all out on her!"
"And to think I treated you like my own daughter. You ungrateful, heartless thing. To do that to Clive's brother—"
"I did not!" My head snapped up as I shouted it.
At once someone in the crowd bellowed, "This vicious woman wants to hurt Mrs. Sanchez! Stop her!"
They surged in like a tide. A hand seized my hair and dragged me sideways, and my scalp lit up with a raw, burning pain.
"Everyone, please. Calm down."
Clive had watched enough of the show. He came forward at his own slow pace.
The whole farce had gone out live, and the crowd's righteous fury only nailed my villain's role down tighter.
Something satisfied flickered behind his eyes. He raised his voice. "Millicent came here especially to apologize to Jade. She knows she was wrong. I'm asking all of you to give her another chance."
Then he steadied Mrs. Sanchez. "Mom, don't be like this. Maybe there's some misunderstanding about my brother. I don't believe Millicent would do that."
His magnanimous, kind-hearted image firmly in place, Clive pulled me aside. He couldn't keep the smugness out of his voice.
"If you'd been this obedient sooner, you wouldn't be apologizing on a livestream now."
"Here. Your pendant, as promised." He opened his palm. "Close enough to the one you lost, 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 good enough either? Fine, I'll find you a more expensive one later. Happy?"
He unfolded a sheet of paper. "Jade was worried you'd get nervous, so she wrote you a script. You'll just read off this in a minute."
The speech had me confessing, in my own words, that I'd wanted Clive so badly I'd put thugs up to assaulting Jade Jennings, then threatened her and spread lies to keep it from coming out.
And then kneeling at her feet to beg her forgiveness.
And she would gently lift me up and pardon my crimes.
Me, ruined. Stripped of everything. The two of them walking off with the applause, the name, the money, all of it.
What a perfect plan.
But I had come for exactly one reason. To make sure it fell apart.
I took the script and the agreement, and under Clive's triumphant gaze, I rolled them into a tight tube and whipped them across his face.
The venue went dead silent.
I strode to the main camera.
The moment I planted myself there, the romantic proposal backdrop vanished from the screen.
In its place ran the security 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 really assaulted Jade Jennings and spread those lies about her."
