Seeing my mom alive and well in front of me felt better than anything else.
After dinner, I walked Ethan Walker out. But when I returned to my building, someone suddenly cornered me against the wall.
“Claire…”
Daniel Foster, drunk and reeking of alcohol, was blocking the hallway at the entrance of my apartment.
“Claire, don’t leave me.”
I was utterly baffled. Daniel didn’t even like me—he liked Isabella Reed. So what was with this sudden act of deep affection?
I pushed him away.
“Daniel, you’re drunk. Let go.”
Luckily, Ethan hadn’t gone far. I called him, and he came back to drag Daniel away.
On the way back, Ethan looked unusually serious.
“Daniel likes you.”
“What nonsense are you spouting?”
“He’s not used to losing his little admirer. That’s all. He just enjoyed being chased.”
But Ethan shook his head, resolute.
“Men understand men best. I can see it in his eyes.”
I still thought he was exaggerating. What kind of man “likes” a woman but destroys her family? If that counts as love, I’d rather be hated.
After that night, I deliberately avoided Daniel.
But even so, his adopted sister Isabella kept making trouble for me.
She staged “accidental” run-ins at restaurants, spilling red wine on my clothes. She deliberately swapped out my assignments so I’d get scolded by professors. She even pulled strings to transfer into Columbia.
On her very first day, she already had a swarm of fans and sycophants. With them at her back, she blocked my way coldly.
“Claire Thompson, you’d better stay in your place. Don’t provoke our princess, or you’ll regret it.”
But before they could touch me, my “knight in shining armor” showed up.
Ethan was sharp-eyed. Every time he caught them trying to mess with me, he quietly taught them a lesson until they didn’t dare anymore.
Isabella tried again and again to cause me trouble, but nothing ever stuck. Furious, she even accused me of theft, hoping I’d be expelled.
What she didn’t expect was that my boyfriend, Ethan Walker, was actually the heir of the Walker family fortune. One phone call from him, and the school smoothed everything over for me.
So Isabella shifted strategies.
“Brother, you don’t even need the money. Why insist on being a guest professor here? Why don’t we just go home?”
“You promised to give me half of the family business, didn’t you? I don’t understand anything about it yet. Come back and teach me, okay?”
Daniel didn’t even look up.
“I’ll tell Robert Collins to guide you.”
When her charms failed, Isabella hatched a new plan: framing me for drugging Daniel to expose a scandalous “professor–student affair.”
Her assistant looked uneasy.
“Miss Reed, are you sure about this? If Mr. Foster finds out you’re the one who drugged him, using such dirty tricks to chase Claire away, he’ll be furious…”
“Stop nagging.” Isabella brushed it off, unconcerned.
“I know my brother better than anyone. He’s just temporarily bewitched by that bitch. But once they’re caught in front of livestream cameras, humiliated, he’ll despise her forever.”
That night, according to Daniel’s routine, a drink was drugged. He unsuspectingly drank it.
Immediately, bodyguards carried him into a hotel room.
“Did it work on Claire Thompson’s side?” Isabella asked eagerly.
