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.

As if afraid of waking her, his palm brushed feather-light across my mother's face.

He let out a long sigh：“Violet, why couldn't you have been the one who came to save me with that money? I loved you so much. Why did you have to betray me?”

【You idiot! The supporting character sold everything she owned, down to her mother's last piece of dowry jewelry, converted it all to cash, and handed it to her best friend to bring to you. What more was she supposed to do?】

【Betrayed you? If it weren't for what the supporting character did, you'd have been crippled years ago. And that rotten son of yours should've died in a car crash three years back, right on schedule with the plot!】

I pressed myself into the corner of the wall, reading the truth scrolling across the floating text, biting down on my sleeve so I wouldn't make a sound.

So that was it. Back then, everyone had been deceived.

【Final day of the countdown.】

The next morning, before dawn had even broken, my brother barged in and tossed two sets of clothes at me.

“Tomorrow, Father is holding a wedding with Mother.”

“Father's worried Mother will be looked down on, so he specifically wants you and Violet there as witnesses. That's the only way the other high-society wives will truly accept her.”

The fact that my mother had remarried back then was one thing. People had always scorned her for it.

But a best friend inserting herself into a marriage on the verge of collapse wasn't exactly a badge of honor either.

Over the years, neither of them had escaped the whispers.

That was exactly why Eileen reacted so violently whenever anyone called her the other woman.

I stood frozen, aching for my mother.

If what the floating text said last night was true.

Then Eileen hadn't just hidden the truth about what happened back then. She'd stolen my mother's husband while she was at it.

How could the victim stand as witness for the person who destroyed her?

I couldn't contain my fury. I grabbed the clothes and hurled them to the floor：“Absolutely not! Get out! Eileen IS the other woman, and I will never stand there and vouch for her!”

“Mother carried you for nine months and gave birth to you. How can you treat her like this!”

My brother seized me by the throat, rage flickering in his eyes.

“Effie, I'll say it one more time. Eileen is my mother. That woman lying in bed who abandoned her husband and child without a shred of loyalty is NOT.”

“You're right. I'm certainly not your mother.”

My mother had come out of the room at some point. She picked up the clothes from the floor, her voice quiet and even：“I'll attend the wedding tomorrow. You can go now.”

She hadn't even finished speaking when several servants burst through the door.

“Young Master, something terrible has happened! The Madam tried to kill herself!”

My brother's expression changed instantly. He flew out of the room and nearly collided with my father, who was already rushing toward us.

His eyes were dark, his face terrifyingly grim.

He shoved the door open and slapped my mother across the face：“Violet, I was still too soft on you.”

Ignoring how white her face had gone, he closed his hand around her throat：“How dare you post something like that online?! How do you have the nerve?!”

A few hours earlier, an anonymous user had published a post titled 《After My Best Friend Stole My Husband, I Found Someone New》.

It shot to the top of the trending charts almost immediately.

The post not only confirmed that Eileen had inserted herself into the marriage, but described in graphic detail the thrill and forbidden excitement of the affair with another man.

The author hadn't named names, but anyone paying attention could tell exactly who it was about.

“Sleeping with someone else was that thrilling for you? Violet, are you really that shameless?”

【Let go of her! The supporting character is about to die!】

I saw the text flashing above and threw myself at my father like I'd lost my mind, sinking my teeth into his hand.

He flinched from the pain and finally released his grip on my mother's throat.

He pointed at me and roared：“Beat this brat to death!”

“No!”

My mother screamed and threw her arms around me：“Don't touch the child! Whatever anger you have, take it out on me. Don't touch the child.”