"I'm your sister. What's wrong with asking you for a little money? You know I'm just a housewife now. I don't have any income. What, you want to watch me sweat over a few hundred dollars?"

A few hundred dollars. That wasn't hard to manage.

But a few hundred here, a few hundred there, over and over again?

She knew I was just a student. She knew my family didn't give me a living allowance. And still, she held her hand out without a shred of hesitation.

It only got worse after Tim was born.

I'd just finished my master's degree and was in the thick of job hunting. Jennifer didn't want to pay for a nanny, so she got our mother to trick me into coming home to take care of her kid.

Before Tim turned two, he spent far more time in my arms than he ever did in Jennifer's.

Once he was older, she turned me into her free tutor. When his grades were good, it was because her son was naturally brilliant. When they slipped, it was because I'd been a bad influence.

After so many years, I'd gotten used to all of it.

Until she told me to pull strings for Tim at school. To shortchange other students for his benefit.

That was the first time I ever said no to her.

It cost me my life.

My mother's texts kept rolling in, one after another. She talked about how she'd raised me, how hard her life had been.

All of it aimed at one goal.

She wanted me to admit to taking bribes, then apologize to Jennifer and Tim.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The demand was absurd, and yet they issued it like it was the most natural thing in the world.

But I didn't have the energy to fight her right now. I knew Jennifer had prepared something else to destroy me.

Just like in my previous life, another video hit the trending page that night.

The man in the video was the father of one of my top students.

"My kid is in Melissa Donaldson's class. The other parents all assumed that since my daughter's grades were good, Ms. Donaldson would treat her well."

"But what you don't know is that ever since Donaldson became the homeroom teacher, she's been dropping hints. Our family has given her at least two hundred thousand dollars. It was only because of that money that she was ever nice to my daughter."

Then came the chat screenshots, carefully cropped to remove all context.

Some of them were outright fabricated.

Every line of those messages was blown up, zoomed in on, dissected word by word. Every punctuation mark was analyzed in essay-length posts, all of it treated as ironclad evidence of my guilt.

It didn't take long before I was doxxed. My personal information was plastered across the internet.

They found out Tim was my nephew, and the vitriol turned even uglier.

She'd scam her own nephew? Is she even human?

Think about it. If a student were a teacher's relative, they'd normally get special treatment at school. If her own nephew was forced to spend his pocket money buying her gifts, Donaldson must have been targeting this kid on purpose.

My lawyer called and asked if I wanted to get ahead of it, try to contain the damage.

I shook my head.

"Let it burn. The bigger, the better."

I wasn't after some slap on the wrist.

I wanted them to pay the full price.

Jennifer's call came through.

"Melissa. How does it feel? Scared yet?"

"I want you to remember this lesson. That's what you get for sticking my son in the last row on purpose."

What a joke.

Seating in my class was on a rotation. Everyone took turns. Tim couldn't stand sitting in the back for even a single day and wanted me to permanently assign him the best seat in the room.

The audacity was truly something.

On the other end of the line, Tim's voice dripped with glee.

"This isn't nearly enough of a lesson."

"That's right, everything my son says is right," Jennifer cooed.

She finished praising Tim, then turned her venom back on me.

"Melissa, since you're my sister, I'll give you one chance. Bow and apologize to me and my son, and then pay our family a settlement."

"And another thing—Timmy's always been terrible at math. You let him come to your place for free tutoring, and we'll forgive you."

I couldn't hold back a laugh.

"Forgive me? What's your forgiveness worth, exactly?"

Jennifer gritted her teeth.

"Don't push your luck!"

I didn't bother arguing with her. I hung up.

Jennifer only knew the man was a parent from my class's top student. That alone made him credible enough.

What she didn't know was that the man had been divorced for years. His daughter lived with his ex-wife.

Using him to frame me had actually been Tim's idea. He'd seen the man show up at the top student's parent-teacher conference and assumed he was her father.

And that man was a gambler.

A message popped up on my phone.

"Found it. Three days ago, he came into fifty thousand dollars. As of today, he's already gambled away half."

Fifty thousand?

Jennifer used to come begging me for three hundred bucks. But to set me up, she'd clearly been willing to go all in.

I scrolled through my contacts until I found the one labeled "Brother-in-law."

"Melissa?"

Benjamin Dickerson's voice was surprised, but it quickly shifted to smugness.

"Calling me now? Finally ready to beg?"

"I told you before—just give my boy a little face. All he did was rough up some little girl. But no, you made him read an apology in front of the whole class. Now that the stick's coming down on you, it doesn't feel so good, does it?"

I said one thing.

"Instead of wasting your time mocking me, maybe check your bank balance."

Benjamin kept an iron grip on the household finances. Neither Jennifer nor Tim dared touch his accounts lightly.

What exactly would happen if Benjamin found out, I wasn't sure. All I knew was that two years ago, Jennifer had dipped into the bank account, and then she and Tim had hidden out at my mother's place for two weeks.

The reason she'd dared to do it this time was simple: she'd convinced herself it was all for her son, and Benjamin would never hold a grudge against his precious boy.

She was wrong.

Benjamin loved money more than he loved his son.

The next day, I went to my mother's neighborhood.

This time around, every one of these so-called family bonds deserved to be cut clean.

Countless stares followed me through the complex. I could hear them whispering about me.

I ignored all of it. But the moment I stepped through the door, my mother's palm cracked across my face.

"I raised you for nothing! Do you have any idea what people are saying about me now?"

She raised her hand again. I caught her arm.

"When you were living in the apartment I bought, eating the supplements I paid for, did you feel like you'd raised me for nothing?"

It was the first time I'd ever fought back against my mother.

She looked at me like she'd seen a ghost.

I pushed her hand away.

"Your reputation was ruined by me? Or was it ruined by Jennifer? You know the answer."

"Your sister only did this because you wouldn't give Timmy face!"

She stood up, hands on her hips, screaming at me.

"Timmy is the only boy in this family! You made him apologize in front of all those people. Did you ever once think about his dignity?"

I sat on the couch and watched her lose it, my expression cold.

"When I was little, you screamed at me in front of the whole neighborhood. Did you ever once think about my dignity?"

"You're just a girl! Your face isn't worth that much!"

I laughed.

"Aren't you a woman too? Your reputation isn't worth that much either. The neighbors say a few things about you, and you can't handle it?"

"You—!"

Her hand froze in midair. She couldn't find the words.

"Mom!"

The front door slammed open.

It was Jennifer, with Tim right behind her.

They were both covered in bruises.

"Mom, that animal Benjamin hit me! He hit Timmy too!"

My mother's eyes welled with tears, her heart breaking on the spot.

She rushed over to comfort Tim. Jennifer, meanwhile, spotted me on the couch.

"It was you!"

"Melissa, you told Benjamin I took money from the account, didn't you!"

I didn't deny it.

She lunged at me in a frenzy, swinging wildly. I caught her with one hand and shoved her to the ground.

It was only now that I realized something. Fighting back against them barely took any strength at all.

It just took a lot of courage.

I crouched down and looked Jennifer in the eye.

"Can't take it already?"

"We're not done yet. Check what's trending."