To purify her filthy thoughts, they said.

The second time, when she was close to her due date, Eileen sent away every doctor in the house. My mother hemorrhaged and was rushed to the emergency room.

The baby didn't make it. And the damage left behind was irreversible.

My father barely scolded Eileen. A few token words, nothing more.

All she had to do was shed a couple of tears, and he melted.

To make it up to her, he postponed his meetings and took her on a vacation abroad.

Leaving my mother, who had just lost her child, alone at home.

This time, the doctors had been very clear: given my mother's condition, if anything else went wrong, she would never be able to have children again.

From the moment she found out she was pregnant until just a few days ago, my mother had been impossibly careful. She hadn't even dared to step outside.

It was her therapist who finally convinced her to go for a walk, worried that staying cooped up would do more harm than good. And that walk led straight to disaster.

I couldn't stand it. I grabbed the phone and screamed at whoever was on the other end：“You evil woman! This is all your fault! Stop pretending you care——ah!”

Before I could finish, my brother kicked me to the ground.

“Look what that woman turned you into! You're just a kid and you're already this vicious!”

My mother dragged herself out of bed, swaying, and threw herself over me.

“If you want to hurt someone, hurt me! Don't touch her!”

She so rarely fought back like that. The fierceness of it caught my brother off guard, and for a moment he had nothing to say.

My father's brow furrowed, displeasure carved into every line of his face. He pointed at me and snapped：“You ungrateful brat! Who raised you to be this heartless?!”

Then he turned on my mother：“Violet, you're not fit to raise a child. Tomorrow I'm sending her to live with Eileen. You can have some peace and quiet for a while.”

My mother clutched me to her chest and screamed through her tears：“You already took one of my children away from me! I will not let you take her too!”

My father ignored her. He called the servants over and told them to pull me away.

“Let go of her! Don't take her!”

My mother let out a raw, broken scream. Then her body went limp, and she collapsed.

“Mom!”

She didn't wake up until the following afternoon.

After that scene, my father, for once, took back his order. He didn't mention sending me away again.

But before he left, he leaned in close and warned me never to cause trouble again.

Otherwise, daughter or not, he wouldn't go easy on me.

I sat watching my mother's pale profile and found myself thinking about what I'd once overheard, the story of how my parents used to be.

My father and mother had known each other since childhood. Sweethearts since they were young.

After college, she married him against her family's wishes, even though he still carried the stigma of being born out of wedlock.

She stood by him as he built everything from nothing. They went from a cramped rental to a mansion, and along the way, they had my brother.

For a while, they were the couple everyone envied.

Then, just as life was getting better, my father's business fell apart overnight.

A rival stole his project. Investors pulled out. The entire company's cash flow collapsed in a single day.

Everything was chaos.

And right when our family needed my mother most, someone photographed her walking into a hotel with my father's fiercest business rival.

My father sat in their room and waited for her all night.

All he got was a set of divorce papers.

“You can't give me the life I want. Let's end this.”

After that day, she left everything behind and went to be with that man.

I was too young to understand. But as I grew older, I heard what people said. They called my mother a vain, heartless woman who abandoned her family.

She never explained herself. Not once. She just sat quietly, staring out the window.

I was still lost in thought when a loud crash came from outside the door.

My brother barged in, a crowd of people trailing behind him.

He glanced at my mother on the bed, his brow creasing：“She's still not awake.”

I rushed in front of him, spreading my arms to block his path：“What are you doing here?”

“Bringing a gift!”

A sugary voice rang out from behind my brother.

Celia Fox wore a look of pure innocence, all bright eyes and dimpled smile. In her hands was a cat, gutted, its chest cavity hollowed out, fur matted with blood.

I recognized it instantly. It was Chubby, the cat Mom had raised for six years.

A gift Dad had given her on their third wedding anniversary.

“Stupid thing. Its guts were already hanging out and it still tried to bite me!”

“It bit you?”

Liam grabbed her hand, his brow creased with concern, and turned her arm until he found a faint bite mark on her forearm.

“You should've had the servants handle it. Why would you do this yourself?”

“That animal scratched my mom. I had to skin it alive myself, or it wouldn't have been enough.”

“It didn't even hurt, though. It barely had any strength left. One little dying twitch, and I snapped its neck.”

Celia was beaming as she said it.

I lost it. I threw myself at her and we went down in a tangle of fists and nails：“That was Mom's baby! Die! Who said you could kill Chubby? You're evil! Die!”

We were still fighting when a slap cracked across my face so hard my head snapped sideways.

Liam wrenched me off and flung me aside, then carefully helped Celia to her feet：“Are you okay? That little psycho has completely lost her mind!”

Blood trickled from my nose. A servant hauled me up off the floor by my arm.

【Is this brat brain-dead? His own sister, his flesh and blood, and he sides with an outsider to bully her!】

【Like father, like son. Both of them ungrateful wolves.】

“Hit her!”

Liam's voice cut through the room like a whip.

One slap after another landed on my face, each one rougher than the last.

The noise was loud enough to wake Mom, who was still unconscious inside.

She came out bracing herself against the wall and shoved the servants away from me.

I fell to the floor the moment they let go.

“What are you doing?! Who gave you permission to barge in here?!”

“Your daughter hurt someone, Violet. Disciplining her is perfectly reasonable.”

Liam barely spared Mom a glance, his lip curled with contempt.

A sharp crack.

Mom gathered every last ounce of strength she had and, for the first time in her life, hit her own son.

“Get out! You're not my son. Get out! All of you, get out!”

“Now, now, Violet. Let's talk this through. No need to hit the children.”

Abner stood in the doorway with Eileen on his arm, then walked inside.

The second he saw the handprint blazing red across Liam's cheek, his expression darkened：“Have you completely lost your mind, Violet? He's your own son. You hit him over some brat whose father could be anyone?”

I was born one month before Dad's business collapsed.

After the photos of Mom going into a hotel with another man surfaced, everyone started wondering whether she had been seeing someone behind his back all along.

And I was the proof.

To verify who I really was, I was dragged through paternity test after paternity test.

Every single one confirmed I was his.

But after that, neither he nor Liam treated me the way they used to.

Even when rumors spread that I was illegitimate, they said nothing. They let the whispers grow.

I only understood later. They never actually doubted my blood. They were using me to punish Mom for her supposed betrayal.

Mom stepped in front of me and pointed at the blood on my lip：“Are you blind, Abner? Your daughter, beaten by servants right in front of you, and you don't see it?”

“Uncle, that's not what happened! She called my mom a homewrecker who deserved to never have children, said she'd always be a dirty mistress hiding in the shadows. I couldn't stand it, so I hit her first.”

Celia blurted it out, her voice cracking with rehearsed urgency.

Liam stiffened. Something flickered behind his eyes as he looked at her.

But when Abner's gaze turned to him, waiting, he nodded：“Yes, Father. It happened exactly the way Celia said.”

Eileen spoke up from the side：“That's……Effie, how could you say that about me……”

She covered her nose and mouth with one hand, letting out a soft whimper.

My father's voice cracked like a whip：“You ungrateful wretch! Who do you think you are?! Someone take her to the basement and lock her in. She stays there until she's ready to apologize.”

“Lock me up instead!”

My mother stood rigid in front of my father, staring him down.

【No, Violet! You're only going to make the male lead angrier!】

【He responds when you yield. Stop going head-to-head with him!】

Sure enough, Abner fixed my mother with a long, searching look, trying to find the smallest trace of surrender.

He found none.

“Your health is too fragile for me to touch you, but……” His gaze turned razor-sharp：“I'm cutting off your mother's medical expenses.”

My mother's body went rigid.

The year my father lost everything, my grandfather's family hadn't lifted a finger. They'd even humiliated him publicly when my mother remarried.

Later, when my father clawed his way back, he didn't just crush his longtime rivals. He destroyed my grandfather's entire family too.

My grandfather and uncle were driven to take their own lives. My grandmother collapsed from illness not long after.

The Summers family, once powerful enough that people fought for their favor, had been reduced to a single survivor: my mother.

My father knew that my grandmother was my mother's last line of defense and her only living relative.

She stared at him, tears rolling down her face in heavy, unbroken streams：“You have no heart, Abner. The year you went under, it was my mother who secretly sent someone to——”

“Ahh——”

A raw, guttural scream tore out of her.

【Stop talking, Supporting Character! You broke system rules by defying fate to save this father and son. The punishment has been triggered. The system will not let you speak the truth.】

I stared at the golden text, frozen.

The truth?

What truth?

What really happened that year?!

Just as the text warned, my mother crumpled to the ground. Her mouth opened again and again, but each time it was forced shut.

She writhed on the floor, moaning in agony, as though some invisible torture was being inflicted on every nerve in her body.

【Has the system lost its mind? That voltage will kill her!】

I crawled to her side：“Mom, stop. Please stop talking.”

“Come on, sis, this really isn't the time to put on a show. Just apologize to Abner and it'll all blow over. No need for the theatrics.”

“Seriously, Mrs. Summers, nobody even touched you. This act is way too over the top. Just say sorry to Mr. Farley!”

Mother and daughter, perfectly in sync. A few sentences was all it took to turn my mother's real, suffocating pain into a cheap performance.

My father's hand, half-extended toward her, slowly pulled back.

Whatever flicker of concern had crossed his face curdled into the cold fury of a man who believed he'd been played.

“Fine! You want to take the punishment for that little brat? I'll grant your wish!”

“Someone get them out of here! Both of them kneel outside. Without my permission, no one helps them. No one.”

I scrambled across the floor on my hands and knees and grabbed the hem of my father's trousers：

“Father, I was wrong, I was wrong! Mom just had a miscarriage. Please don't punish her. Please!”

He didn't even glance at me. He just kicked me away like something dirty on his shoe.

Then he left, his arm around Eileen, Liam, and Celia.

My mother and I knelt outside the entire night.

A heavy rain started at midnight. My mother pulled me tight against her, shielding me with her body.

She didn't make it to dawn. The fever took her consciousness first.

The punishment was finally over.

Late that night, my father pushed the bedroom door open a crack and stood there, watching my mother lying unconscious on the bed.

After a few minutes, he stepped inside.