Eve, accompanied by Max, stormed out of their grand, ahem, excessively ostentatious residence with the theatrical flair of monarchs ousted from their thrones.
Max's voice, sharp and grating, sliced through the tension like shattered glass.
"What the hell do you think you're doing? Turn off that livestream immediately! You're humiliating this family!"
His venomous bark made Sophia jolt. Her shoulders tensed instinctively, as if her spine remembered the lash of fear it had learned to carry long ago.
But that old fear was short-lived.
Her eyes narrowed. Her heartbeat steadied, and in its place, a molten fury surged through her bloodstream.
How dare he?
She wasn't the broken little girl anymore, no longer the ghost of Cecilia who trembled in corners and shrank from footsteps.
Last night, Sophia had combed through Cecilia's memories.
She had wandered through every locked door and opened every buried wound. And what she discovered twisted her stomach in disgust.
Cecilia had been abandoned like refuse, tossed into a crumbling orphanage where neglect was routine and hunger was constant.
The director barely acknowledged the children, and tiny, desperate Cecilia scavenged for crumbs like a stray dog.
At first, Sophia didn't feel much sympathy. In her past life, her own parents had discarded her, too. Cold indifference wasn't new to her.
But things took a darker turn.
When the Parker family adopted Cecilia, the girl had dared to hope. Her heart, fragile as wet paper, had reached for love.
Only to be crushed.
Mrs. Parker, a woman fractured by bipolar disorder, welcomed her with one hand and whipped her with the other.
One moment, she'd cradle Cecilia like a lost lamb; the next, she accused her of being a homewrecker's spawn or, worse, the reason her real daughter had vanished.
She pinched. She beat. She locked Cecilia in the suffocating dark of a storage closet for hours, sometimes days, without food.
She tore at her sanity with barbed words and unpredictable punishments.
And yet… Cecilia had still loved her.
Still forgave her.
Because when Mrs. Parker's kinder self returned, she'd sob uncontrollably, kissing bruises she claimed not to remember, promising it would never happen again.
But it always did.
And then there was Max, the so-called 'older brother'. The sadist in disguise. He didn't raise fists. No, his cruelty came wrapped in jokes and mischief.
'Pranks,' he called them, accidental near-drownings, fake burglaries, animal carcasses stuffed into closets. Psychological warfare disguised as childish fun.
Cecilia's trauma ran so deep that her body had developed muscle memory for fear. Max's voice alone could reduce her to a trembling wreck.
And Max knew that.
He used it like a dog trainer snapping a whip.
But Sophia wasn't Cecilia.
Her lips curved upward, not in joy, but in a kind of delighted vengeance, and with a casual flick of her fingers, she muted the microphone.
Then, with deliberate insolence, she raised her hand and extended her middle finger.
"F*ck you. If you so much as raise your voice at me again," Sophia said, her tone chillingly calm, "I will tell everyone you had tried to make a move on me!"
A stunned silence fell over the room.
"Shameless!" Max thundered, his voice cracking with fury. His face flushed a violent red, veins pulsing at his temple.
His right hand twitched at his side, just barely restrained from striking her.
Sophia didn't flinch. She met his gaze head-on, her spine rigid, every nerve in her body braced for impact.
"Brother, enough!" Eve intervened swiftly, placing a calming hand over Max's clenched fist.
"You're making it worse." Then, with a faux sweetness, she turned to Cecilia, who stood behind the tripod, livestream still blinking red.
"Please, just end the livestream. We can discuss this calmly. Whatever you want, we'll give it to you."
Sophia's smile was weak, too strained to be sincere, as she leaned forward and turned on the mic with a barely audible click.
Her voice, however, rang clear:
"If I'm found dead within the next thirty days… or if I don't go live again in exactly two hours… Please, someone, send this recording to the authorities. The Parker family wants me gone."
She looked straight into the camera, eyes gleaming not with tears, but with defiance. There was no mistaking her message.
She had just turned the predator's den into a cage of accountability.
And the whole world was watching.
Eve, indifferent, glanced at Cecilia with complex emotions in her eyes. She originally planned to finish off Cecilia once she left their residence, but now, she will have to wait for one month.
Sophia, turning slightly, happened to catch the flicker of venomous intent flashing through Eve's gaze.
A soft chuckle echoed in her mind.
Ah… a woman's heart. A vessel of tenderness, yet when wronged, the deadliest poison.
Without wasting a breath on niceties, Sophia spoke with cold precision, her words sharp and deliberate.
"All of my legal documents, two million dollars in cash, a vehicle in my name, and a deed to an estate."
Eve scoffed audibly, tossing her hair over one shoulder with practiced grace.
"You've got some nerve," she said haughtily.
"That's far too much. The Parkers have already extended you a generosity you didn't deserve by raising you under their roof. You should count your blessings and walk away with your papers, nothing more."