My cousin, Leroy Huff, is bringing his new girlfriend, Jodie Collins, home for the first time ever.

At the dining table, everyone chats with each other animatedly. Suddenly, Jodie stares at my face intensely before pretending to be shocked.

"Have I seen you before, Isabelle? You're a member of a high-class escort group, aren't you? I've seen your price list on the group chat's photo album before. I think… you were charging only 200 dollars per night, right?"

After she's done speaking, she pretends to cover her mouth while looking all pure and innocent.

All noise and chatter fade away instantly. My relatives turn to look at me in disdain.

"She looks so prim and proper at first glance, but to think that she's actually involved in such business…"

"You bring nothing but shame to the Huff family! Don't ever tell anyone else that you know us!"

Enraged, my dad smashes his wine glass. Meanwhile, my mom just wipes her tears away quietly.

But I dab my mouth with a napkin slowly before shooting Jodie a half-smile.

"It's normal for you to think of me as familiar-looking. After all, I'm a member of the vice squad. Last month, I just arrested you after a stakeout."

My words froze the room for a solid three seconds.

My cousin's girlfriend, Jodie Collins, dropped her cutlery onto the table, and the color instantly drained from her innocent face.

I sneered inwardly. She was scared already?

Before I could even pull out my badge, my spineless cousin, Leroy Huff, flipped.

He slammed his cutlery back down, pointing a finger dead at my face as he yelled, "Isabelle Huff! Are you out of your mind? You're making up lies this big to save your pride? If you're in the vice squad, then I'm the king!"

My aunt, Andrea Huff, snapped out of her daze next. She chimed in with her usual passive-aggressive malice, "I've always said that Isabelle has loved lying ever since she was a kid.

"She gets caught doing something shameful by Jodie, and now she's pretending to be a cop? That's a federal crime, you know. Daniel, aren't you going to rein in your daughter?"

My father, Daniel Huff, flushed red with rage. He was about to slam the table when my uncle, Jacob Huff, held him back.

By then, Jodie had collected herself.

I had to hand it to her. The woman's nerves were made of steel. She deserved an award for her acting skills.

Her eyes welled up instantly, tears trembling perfectly on the edge of falling.

Feigning weakness, she collapsed into Leroy's arms and trembled like a leaf.

"Leroy… maybe I got the wrong person. B-But that photo on the 200-dollar rate sheet looked exactly like Isabelle…"

Sobbing softly, she fumbled through her purse and pulled out her phone. "Let me find it for everyone. Maybe I really was just seeing things."

She opened her gallery and thrust the screen right in front of the relatives' faces.

It was a blurry profile shot.

The woman in the photo was wearing next to nothing in a piece of skimpy lingerie, posing provocatively.

Other than the hairstyle being somewhat like mine, the face looked totally photoshopped.

But did anyone at this table actually care about the truth?

Of course not. They just wanted gossip and a chance to drag my family through the mud.

As the phone made its rounds, the living room erupted.

"Goodness! You really can't judge a book by its cover!"

"She acts so proper and dresses so modestly, but turns out this is how she makes her money?"

"200 bucks? That's so cheap. Just how desperate is she?"

"The ancestors must be rolling in their graves. To think our family raised such a degenerate!"

Scornful, disgusted glares locked onto me from every direction.

"Really? But it's obvious this picture has been photoshopped," I said.

I pointed at the image, zooming in with my fingers. "The edges around the hair are heavily pixelated and jagged, typical of a bad edit. But more importantly, take a look at her hand at the back. She has six fingers."

Having handled my fair share of image-tampering fraud cases, I knew exactly what to look for.

Jodie clearly hadn't anticipated that.

Her face turned pale before she quickly pivoted back to her victim act. "Isabelle, if you say it's not you, then fine. Just don't look at me like that. You're scaring me…"

With that, she buried her face in Leroy's chest.

Leroy pointed at my nose and yelled again, "You did the deed and now you're trying to muzzle people? If you're so innocent, prove it!"

The rest of the relatives chimed in, murmuring their disgust.

I caught Jodie flashing me a smug smirk in Leroy's arms. It was the arrogant taunt of a winner.

Fine. She wanted to play it this way, huh?

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

I was going to call for backup right then and there, but after tapping the screen twice, it went completely black.

Damn it. I had worked so late the night before that I'd forgotten to charge it, and the battery was completely dead.

Frowning, I tossed the phone back onto the table.

Jodie's sharp eyes caught the movement instantly. Adopting her best innocent-act voice, she gasped, "Isabelle, what were you trying to do with your phone just now?

"Were you trying to prove your innocence? Why won't you let everyone see? Then again, if your father saw the chat logs in the group chat, he'd probably have a heart attack."

Upon hearing that, Leroy looked at me with pure loathing. "Isabelle, you make me sick."

Rage boiled in my chest, but I forced myself to suppress it.

I was a cop. Even out of uniform, I was a cop.

I was going to make sure these people lost so spectacularly that they wouldn't even know what hit them.

"Give me that!"

Desperate to play the hero in front of Jodie, Leroy lunged forward and snatched my phone off the table.

My instincts kicked in to grab it back, but he was too fast.

"Since you're too chicken to look, I'll look for you!"

He mashed the power button a few times. When nothing happened, he sneered. "Ha! Faking a dead battery? Nice try. I bet you did this on purpose."

With a sneer, Leroy carelessly chucked my phone back onto the table.

He threw it with so much force that it left several deep scratches across the screen.

That wasn't just any phone.

It was the token of love, given to me by Ian Lowe.

I slowly raised my head, my gaze turning ice-cold.

Leroy was startled by my gaze and instinctively took a step back, then immediately flew into a rage. "What are you staring at? It's just a few scratches. I'll buy you a new one! Just admit you're a whore!"

Seizing the perfect moment, Jodie reached into her bag and pulled out a stack of printed A4 papers. "Leroy, don't be mad. It's fine if the phone is broken. I actually printed out backups of the chat logs."

She began handing out the fabricated transcripts to the surrounding relatives.

"See for yourselves, everyone. I really hoped I was wrong, but look at the profile picture and the username…"

I glanced at the paper Uncle Jacob was holding.

The profile picture was an exact copy of my WhatsApp profile picture, and the nickname "Isa" matched perfectly.

The text, however, was vile enough to make anyone gag.

"Hey, handsome! 200 dollars for a quickie. 500 dollars for overnight. No protection needed… Isabelle Huff! What do you have to say for yourself now?"

Uncle Jacob's wife, Sidney Smith, screamed out the disgusting lines, spit flying from her mouth.

"Good heavens! How can anyone utter such filth! Have you no shame?"

The room erupted into absolute chaos.

The looks the relatives were giving me now were dripping with sheer revulsion.

"What a disgrace!"

Aunt Andrea turned her fury on my mother, Marie Beasley. She pointed a finger directly at her face. "Is this the stellar daughter you raised? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!

"I bet you weren't any cleaner back in the day. Who knows what kind of cheap tricks you used to worm your way into our family!"

"You…"

The sheer shock and malice hit Mom like a physical blow. Gasping for air, she clutched her chest and collapsed limply onto the couch.

"Mom!"

I rushed over to support her and pressed firmly on her acupressure points to help her relax.

Her face was deathly pale, her breathing shallow and ragged, with tears pooling at the corners of her eyes.

I looked up, my glare locking onto Leroy and Jodie. My words were forced out through clenched teeth. "Defamation carries criminal liability."

Leroy let out a dismissive scoff, looking down his nose at me. "Still talking tough? Who do you think you're scaring with the law at a time like this? Jodie is a rich heiress. Her family owns a multi-million-dollar company! She has no reason to be jealous of you. Why would she frame you?

"Take a good look in the mirror. Everything you're wearing combined wouldn't even cross 20 bucks!"

Jodie stepped forward, sighing with a grand display of magnanimity.

She reached down to grab my arm, but I violently slapped her hand away.

She didn't get angry. Instead, she adopted the look of a merciful saint. "Isabelle, I get it. We all do what we have to do to survive. How about this? As long as you promise to quit this line of work, get down on your knees in front of everyone, and apologize to me, I'll let it go."

Jodie continued, "I can pay to help you clean your slate, and I can even give you a sum of money to leave this city and start over. What do you say? I'm only doing this for Leroy and to protect the Huff family name."

She stood there on her moral high ground, practically radiating the halo of a saint.

My relatives nodded in unison, singing her praises.

"Look at Jodie. She's so mature and generous! Isabelle, you'd better get down on your knees right now! An offer like this won't come twice!"

I gently propped Mom up against the couch cushions, then slowly drew myself up to my full height.

Instead of getting angry, I let out a cold laugh. "Get down on my knees? Start over? Jodie, do you have any idea that intentionally fabricating and spreading defamatory claims carries a sentence of up to three years in prison?"

Seeing that I was not only ungrateful but also dared to bite back, the relatives completely lost it.

Desperate to suck up to Jodie, the "heiress", they wanted nothing more than to grind me into the dirt.

Uncle Jacob slammed his cup onto the table with a heavy thud. "Isabelle Huff! Don't you dare push it! You are going to write a confession letter and apologize to Jodie today for the sake of our family's reputation! Otherwise, I will kick you out of the family!"

Aunt Andrea's eyes lit up, the wheels in her greedy mind turning at warp speed.

"Exactly! An apology isn't enough. We need compensation! We've suffered so much humiliation because of you. You owe us for emotional distress!"

"Hand over all that dirty money you've made these past few years and split it among us! Consider it penance!"

Looking at their greedy faces, I found it almost comical.

These were my so-called family.

The moment money was on the table, they threw every shred of decency out the window.

Noticing that I remained unfazed, Leroy grew bolder. He pulled out his phone and opened a livestreaming app.

"Since you refuse to repent, I'll let the internet judge you! Everyone, look! This is my high-class escort cousin! She was caught red-handed with solid proof, and she still won't admit it. She's throwing a tantrum right here in our living room!"

He shoved the camera right into my face.

The viewer count instantly skyrocketed, and the chat began scrolling at breakneck speed.

"Holy crap! She looks so innocent. Can't believe she does that for a living."

"200 bucks? Where's the link? Sign me up!"

"Women like this have no shame. Absolutely disgraceful!"

Jodie chose that exact moment to lean into the frame. Her eyes were red, the picture of a deeply wronged victim.

"Please don't attack Isabelle, guys. She just made a mistake. I only wanted to help her find her way back, but she… she wants to hit me…"

Her flawless performance instantly set the chat ablaze.

"You're such an angel! Why are you even trying to help a whore like that?"

"Dox her! Make her lose her job!"

Leroy stared at the screen, his mouth twitching into a distorted grin as digital gifts flooded the screen.

Seeing the chat's furious reaction, he figured he'd turn the heat up a notch to boost his followers.

"Alright, chat! Let's make her kneel and apologize to everyone live on stream!"

I took a deep breath to force the fury back down into my chest.

My fingernails dug into my palms. I was right on the edge.

But I had to remember I was a police officer. I couldn't just use force on civilians without cause.

Seeing that I remained unmoved, Leroy flicked his hand.

"Damn it. Didn't you hear me tell you to get on your knees? Do you really have to make me do this the hard way?"

He raised his palm, swinging it aimed directly at my face.

The split second before his hand made contact, I moved. My left hand shot out like lightning, locking onto his wrist with pinpoint accuracy.

I twisted his arm against the joint, hard.

"Ah!"

Leroy let out a squeal like a slaughtered pig. His entire body was forced to bend forward from the pain.

Seizing the momentum, I stepped into his space, slammed my right hand onto the back of his neck, and forced him downward.

Leroy's face was slammed violently against the solid wood dining table, making the plates and silverware rattle.

The side of his face instantly contorted under the pressure, and his stream of curses dissolved into muffled whimpers.

Dead silence fell over the room.

The cup in Uncle Jacob's hand slipped, shattering into pieces on the floor.

Aunt Andrea's jaw dropped.

No one had expected that Isabelle—the quiet young lady who did nothing but study and work—could move with such lethal precision.