Chapter 2

That night, dragging my exhausted body back home, I got a call from the hospital.

My grandmother had suffered a massive heart attack and was in the ICU.

I drove to the hospital like a maniac. The red surgery light was glaring.

The doctor told me the episode was triggered by severe emotional trauma.

When I finally got into the ward, my eighty-year-old grandmother was lying unconscious under an oxygen mask, completely pale.

Her live-in caregiver was sobbing. "A bunch of thugs banged on the door, claiming they worked for your company and wanted justice. They cornered your grandmother in the hallway, and she just... collapsed on the spot..."

Hearing that, I felt my veins turn to liquid nitrogen.

Lily finally called me back.

She sobbed hysterically over the phone, claiming she had been coerced—that Linda had threatened her family's safety.

I believed her.

I chose to believe there was still a shred of decency left in human nature.

Facing massive public pressure, Lily posted internal memos and statements on her personal social media, clarifying parts of the truth and standing by me.

Yet that very evening, Linda leaked a string of fabricated email threads online.

The fake emails showed conversations between Lily and various vendors, titled "Kickbacks and Embezzlement."

The timeline was crisp, the details seemingly bulletproof.

Public outrage exploded all over again.

"Birds of a feather flock together! No wonder she defended her boss!"

"Turns out they just had a falling out over the loot!"

That night, someone threw a brick through Lily's front window, shattering the glass.

Lily had a total nervous breakdown.

The board of directors officially ousted me as CEO.

They replaced me with an outside interim VP.

And Linda was appointed as the new Chief Marketing Officer.

She didn't even wait for me to clear my things before she brought her entire streaming crew to take over my corner office.

I saw her livestream while sitting in the back of an Uber on my way home.

She sat behind my mahogany desk, stroking the leather armrests with a glowing, triumphant smile.

Looking straight into the lens, she said:

"This seat should have gone to someone who truly needed it a long time ago."

"Someone like me. A mother who is about to bring new life into this world."

Watching that, any warmth left inside me died.

I sold my downtown penthouse and moved into a gated apartment complex with private security.

I thought I could lay low for a while, waiting for the storm to blow over.

I was dead wrong.

Three days after I moved in, my new address was leaked online.

Someone had drawn up a detailed map of the complex, highlighting my exact building and unit number.

In the dead of night, my doorbell would ring aggressively.

Whenever I checked the peephole, there was no one there.

I couldn't sleep. I spent every night huddled on the couch with my knees to my chest until dawn.

On the fourth night, an anonymous package arrived at my door.

No return address.

My trembling hands tore the box open. Inside was a tiny fabric doll dressed in a white funeral shroud, its face painted with a grotesque, eerie grin.

Underneath the doll lay a handwritten note.

"A funeral gift for your unborn child."

I slapped both hands over my mouth to stifle my scream.

I had been trying to conceive.

Aside from my family and my OB-GYN, not a single living soul knew about it.

How did she know?

The walls felt like they were closing in on me.

Yet the final, fatal blow came from my own blood relatives.

My cousin blocked me on everything, then dropped a screenshot into our family group chat.

It showed the moderator list for Linda’s online fan club—and my cousin's name was right there at the top.

The group chat blew up instantly.

My aunt was the first to tag my mom: "Sister, what kind of unforgivable sin did your daughter commit out there?"

My great-aunt chimed in: "She has dragged our entire family name through the mud!"

Then came a voice memo from my cousin.

"I told you guys years ago, my cousin is a psycho. She could never stand seeing anyone else do well. Now karma's finally catching up to her."

"She's just a soulless, cold-blooded cash cow. She deserves to die alone."

My mother handed me her phone, her eyes swollen and red, unable to utter a single word.

Looking at the endless stream of vitriol and condemnation from my own family, an absolute, bone-deep cold washed over me.