Chapter 4I Paid Her Debt She Paid Me in Lies

After the gala, my credibility at the company was in free fall. Key partners began to pull back, citing concerns. A group of self-proclaimed “justice warriors” started protesting outside my office building with signs. The online campaign accusing me of “stealing from an orphan” intensified.

I scrolled through the hateful comments and then quietly locked my phone. Compared to losing my parents and facing down a mountain of debt with a child to raise, this was nothing.

But I never imagined Avery could sink lower.

On the anniversary of my parents’ death, I went to the cemetery. After leaving flowers at their grave, I made my way to the plot where Avery’s parents, the Walkers, were buried.

I stood before their headstone, looking at the warm, kind smiles in the engraved photograph. They had always treated me like a daughter, too. Tears pricked my eyes.

As I stood lost in memory, a commotion broke the silence. I turned, stunned, to see Avery marching into the cemetery with a crowd of people and a cameraman in tow.

“That’s it!” she shouted, pointing at the headstone next to hers. “That’s my sister’s biological parents’ grave!”

Before I could react, she rushed forward and kicked the bouquet of white lilies I had just placed, sending them scattering across the grass.

“You bitch,” she spat. “Did you come here to tell your dead parents the good news? That you stole my family’s money to buy them this fancy tombstone?”

But she was standing in front of her own parents’ grave.

The crowd she’d brought with her surged forward, cameras and phones pointed directly at me.

【What a monster! The Millers should have adopted a dog instead!】

【Her parents must have been trash to raise someone so evil! They deserved to die young!】

【I bet her mom was a whore. That’s why she doesn’t know any better than to steal what belongs to other people!】

The vicious curses rained down on me.

“All of you, stop it!” I yelled, my entire body trembling with rage.

“What, you don’t like that?” Avery walked up to her own parents’ headstone, swept all the offerings I’d laid out onto the ground, and stomped on them. “You’re so devoted to your dead mom and dad, aren’t you? Do they visit you in your dreams? Do they teach you how to be a backstabbing, ungrateful witch?”

“Stop it!” I tried to push through to stop her, but the people she’d brought with her held me back. Some of them started picking up rocks and throwing them at the tombstone.

“Let’s smash the grave of these losers who raised a monster!”

“Yeah, make sure they have no peace in the afterlife!”

Seeing this, Avery’s face lit up with manic glee. She picked up a large, jagged rock and heaved it at the headstone.

“I’m telling you, your entire family line is cursed to have produced a parasite like Olivia Miller!” she screamed. “And you can watch from hell as I take back every single thing that belongs to me!”

With a sickening crack, the rock slammed into the granite. The headstone fractured, a jagged line running right through the smiling faces of Mr. and Mrs. Walker.

In that moment, the last shred of affection, of duty, I felt for Avery vanished. It turned to ash and blew away.

“Avery,” I said. My voice was eerily calm. “You want your parents’ inheritance, is that right?”

She froze for a second, then lifted her chin defiantly. “Of course! It was always mine!”

“Fine.” I nodded, my eyes sweeping over the cameras. “Then I’ll see you in court.”