Watching the girl force that brittle smile, guilt clamped down hard on my heart.
Late that night, Edgar called.
"Desiree, don't blame me."
"Angelica's pregnant. She's been sick with worry all day that you and I still have something between us. Her mood's been terrible."
"The only way to give her enough peace of mind was to reverse the transfer and block you."
I gripped the phone, my fingertips shaking and refusing to stop.
"Edgar, do you have any idea what those two million dollars you clawed back cost?"
"A little girl's surgery failed. She'll live the rest of her life with those thick scars."
On the other end, his voice was flat.
"Scar-removal surgery was just the hospital's cover story to begin with."
"If that surgery were real, if your face could be restored the way it was, would I have gone looking for Angelica?"
"And anyway, what does her face have to do with me?"
Three years ago, he broke his bones saving a child who'd jumped from a building, and spent three months laid up in the hospital.
Eyes red, I asked him, "Was it worth it?"
Back then his face was gentle.
He said a few broken bones in exchange for one living, breathing life was worth it, and then some.
Now he'd ruined a little girl's future.
And all he said was, "What does that have to do with me?"
The pure, untouchable light I'd craved in my girlhood shattered completely in that instant.
He dropped one last line. "I'll get the trending topic taken down. This ends here."
Then he hung up.
But the storm was nowhere near over. Angelica rode the attention that belonged to me and turned herself into an internet celebrity.
"Want to know why Desiree Harding knew she was the other woman and did it anyway?"
On camera, she covered her mouth and laughed softly.
"Because she's the daughter of a mistress. Her mother clawed her way up by sleeping around, and Desiree learned the whole playbook from the time she was little."
The comment feed exploded.
Some cursed me as shameless. Some asked if it was really true.
"Of course it's true. My husband told me himself."
"Back when she was trying to pull my husband out of the shadow of being bullied at school, she said it herself. It's honestly laughable."
To back it up, she turned her head and looked off-camera.
"Honey, isn't that right?"
Edgar's figure appeared at the edge of the frame. He paused for a beat.
He didn't contradict her. He just pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth.
Then he took her phone from her hand, his voice mild.
"There's a good girl. Turn off the stream."
"Why bring up a woman like that?"
The feed cut out and the screen went black, but everything that was meant to spread had already spread.
Off-camera, my fingernails were buried deep in my palm.
Edgar knew perfectly well that my mother had been deceived back then.
Even after she jumped to her death to prove her innocence,
the mistress label still followed her for the rest of her life.
Once, I'd torn open my own scars to pull Edgar out of the dark.
Now he'd ripped my wound open again, raw and bleeding, just to give Angelica a moment of comfort.
The comments scrolled wildly.
【So she's a mistress's daughter. No wonder she's so good at seducing men.】
【It's in her blood. Some filth doesn't wash out.】
【Ugly as that, cheap trash like her, I wouldn't take her even for free.】
The pain tore through my chest all at once.
I faced the mirror and looked at the vicious scars on my face.
I thought of the call the doctor had made three seconds earlier.
"Miss Harding, there's hope for Minnow's face."
"There's an expert team overseas that can do an artificial skin graft. Seventy percent success rate, but the cost… at least three million."
I looked at myself again, and my eyes held a resolve I'd never had before.
I picked up the makeup remover and stripped away the disguise.
A stunning face appeared in the mirror.
Then I drew a deep breath.
I set up my phone, opened the livestream, and typed out the title.
【One Dollar to Unlock: The Cheap Chicken and Three Years of Love and Hate With L.A.'s New Money Elite】
