I couldn’t believe he would actually use my mother’s life as leverage against me.
Had all that love been a lie? Just a game to him?
Even though I already hated him to the bone, the sting of his cruelty still pierced through my chest.
I shut my eyes in pain; my voice was hoarse beyond recognition.
"Where are you? I’ll bring the evidence right now."
When I arrived at the apartment, I realized he had given the sea-view place he once gifted me to Alina.
As I stepped inside, everything that once belonged to us was gone, replaced by a completely different style.
I clutched my chest, but all I felt was hollow emptiness.
When Maverick came downstairs with Alina, I lifted the USB in my hand.
"Maverick, I brought it."
"If you want it, then tell me, where are you keeping my mother?"
Alina’s face lit up with smug satisfaction the moment she saw the drive.
She knew that with Maverick shielding her, nothing, no matter how serious, could ever touch her.
"She’s in my private hospital!"
The moment I got my answer, I flung the USB straight at his face.
Without wasting another second, I turned and walked away.
When I finally found my mother’s hospital room, I stood frozen, struck like lightning. One of her legs was gone.
I shook my head in disbelief, tears falling silently onto the cold, sterile floor.
Every step I took toward her felt like walking on nails, sharp, cruel, unbearable.
"Mom… what happened to your leg? You only fell from the second floor. It shouldn’t have come to this!"
At the sound of my sobs, she stirred. Her tired eyes opened slowly, meeting mine with pain and exhaustion.
"It was Alina. She ordered the doctor to amputate it."
"What? It was her?"
She hadn’t been satisfied with killing my father. Now she had destroyed my mother, too.
The fire inside me roared to life, scorching every inch of my being. I wanted nothing more than to rip Alina apart with my bare hands.
Just then, my phone rang. It was my lawyer.
"Ariella, you need to check the news right now."
I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV, searching for the latest broadcast.
Every news channel was reporting the same thing: that my father had been drunk and jaywalking when he was struck and killed by a car.
But he hadn’t been drinking. And he never jaywalked.
I knew instantly that it was Maverick’s doing.
To protect Alina, he had fabricated a false video to smear my father’s name.
Now that he had the evidence, and I was left empty-handed, they could spin the story however they wanted.
I trembled from head to toe, my whole body shaking with rage.
Beside me, my mother, already frail, was so distressed by the lies that she started coughing up blood.
Her health had been fading ever since my father died.
Now, after being thrown from a building and losing her leg, she was permanently crippled.
And I couldn’t do a thing.
"Ariella, don’t blame yourself. People like us can’t go up against the rich and powerful."
"Let go of the appeal. I’m terrified they’ll come after you next, and if anything happens to you, how would I keep on living?
I was unwilling, so deeply unwilling. But I couldn’t touch Alina. Not even with all this hate in my heart.
As I walked out of the hospital, I heard people cursing my father, calling him a scammer who tried to extort money, saying he deserved to be hit.
They claimed he died rightly.
I couldn’t hold back. I argued with them in a fury, but someone recognized me as his daughter.
Their faces changed. They all stepped back, whispering, "Like father, like daughter."
That I was probably just another fraud looking for pity and compensation.
Two days later, I discharged my mother and held my father’s funeral.
Halfway through the ceremony, a commotion broke out outside.
Someone kicked over the wreaths, ripping apart even the white mourning banners, shredding them into pieces.
