Mom spent three years paying my dead Dad’s debts. Then, on her deathbed, she learned the truth: he’d faked it all. He was alive. … The door creaked open, and the nineteenth man stepped out of Mom’s bedroom, buckling his belt with a sneer. “Even half-dead, your mom is still the best ride in town. That cow was worth every damn minute.” He spat on the floor and walked away without a glance. A faint, wet cough came through the room. “Iris…” I rushed in, but my feet froze at the edge of the bed. The room smelled of stale sweat, copper, and despair. Mom lay there, in a pool of blood, looked like a broken porcelain doll. Her skin was a map of purple and blue, and a thin trail of blood leaked from the corner of her mouth with every ragged breath. Yet, seeing me, she forced the corners of her lips upward. “I paid it off, baby,” she whispered, her voice a rattling shadow. “The debt… it’s gone. Nobody will ever touch you now.” She tried to raise a trembling hand to touch my cheek, then it dropped. A hollow thud against the mattress. “I’m sorry, Iris” she choked out, her eyes beginning to glaze over. “I don’t have much time left. You’ll have to walk the rest… alone.” My world blurred. I couldn’t scream; I couldn’t even breathe. Then—a violent crack split the silence. I turned, my eyes widening in pure shock. Standing there, dressed in a sharp, expensive suit that cost more than our debts, was Dad. Behind him stood my Uncle Lucas, Mom’s brother, looking bored as he checked his gold watch. The two men I had watched “jump” to their deaths three years ago. “Still a dramatic one, aren’t you, Joanna?” Dad said, stepping into the room. He didn’t look at Mom’s shattered body with pity; he looked at her with cold, clinical disgust. He pulled a black credit card from his wallet and tossed it onto her blood-soaked chest. “Remember the charity auction?” he asked. “The day you cancelled Vivian’s card in front of the whole social circle? The day you humiliated her.” “You looked so high and mighty that night, didn’t you? So we decided to bring you down.” Uncle Lucas added. He stepped around a pool of blood as if it were a common puddle. “We let you rot three year. Every debt collector, every ‘thug’ who came to this door?” He smiled, “They were on our payroll. ” “We faked the bankruptcy and debts. We faked the deaths.” “We still watched every single minute of your struggle through the cameras we hid in the walls.” “Now, it’s time to end this.” Dad leaned over her, his voice soft, almost gentle. “Kneel. Apologize to Vivian. Promise you’ll never bully her again, then we’ll let you be our family again. We’ll love you like before.” Mom didn’t cry. A laugh started in her chest. Soft. Hollow. I looked down. Beside her limp hand lay a small, green plastic bottle. It was empty. Antifreeze. Before they broke in, she had swallowed it. “What’s so funny?” Uncle Lucas snapped. He didn’t notice the bottle. He only saw the black blood spray from Mom’s mouth onto his polished leather shoes. “God! Disgusting!” He curled his lip, wiping his shoe on the rug. “What the hell are you faking now, Joanna? You knew we were coming today. Is this fake blood for sympathy? Do you think we’re idiots?” “Mom isn’t faking!” I screamed, lunging at him, but Dad caught me by the throat, shoving me back against the wall. “Don’t be like your mother, Iris. A liar,” Dad hissed. He walked toward the bed, looking at Mom’s mangled limbs with a smirk. “I paid those actors myself. They wouldn’t dare actually touch you. So stop the act and get up.” “Actors?” My voice broke. I looked at the cigarette burns on Mom’s thighs. I looked at the empty space where her right hand used to be—hacked off by a “debt collector” six months ago. Dad saw the stump, but he didn’t flinch. “Nice prosthetic. Very realistic. How much did that cost you? Or did you steal the money I let you keep for food?” “That’s not—” Before I finished, Uncle Lucas cut me off. “Stop wasting words on her. Vivian is outside. She’s been waiting three years for this apology.” “Now get up and kneel, Joanna. Don’t make us drag you.” “Apologize?” she whispered. Her laughter turned into a wet, broken wheeze. “Not… a… chance.” With a final, agonizing surge of will, she tried to push herself up. Yet her remaining arm gave out immediately. She rolled off the bed, her knees hitting the floor with a heavy, bone-snapping thud. For a second, the room was silent. Then, Uncle Lucas lost his temper. He reached down, grabbed Mom by her matted hair, and yanked her head back. “I said GET UP! This isn’t a choice!” Mom screamed. The sound cut straight through me. “Stop it! You’re killing her!” I fought against Dad’s grip, but he held me fast, watching the scene with a bored expression. Just when I thought all hope was lost— Uncle Lucas’ boot struck the green bottle. It rolled across the floor, clinking against the bedpost. My heart hammered. Look at it. Please, just look at the label. If they realized she was poisoned, maybe they’d stop. Maybe they’d feel a shred of guilt. A pause. Uncle Lucas frowned, his eyes following the bottle. He started to bend down. His fingers were barely an inch from the plastic— Then the door swung open again. A woman stumbled in, draped in white silk and diamonds. Vivian.
She dropped to her knees in front of Mom, in the basement filth, putting on a face of mock concern for the men watching. She had knelt like this before. In the hospital. When Mom woke up with fifteen stitches across her stomach. Her eyes were red back then, leaking tears. “You saved me, Joanna,” she had sobbed. “You’re my sister now.” Now, those same hands grabbed Mom’s knuckles. Yet her sharp nails sank into Mom’s knuckles. “Joanna, just hit me,” Vivian whispered, Her voice was like honey poured over glass. “I should have told you Julian was only faking his death. It’s my fault you suffered for three years.” Then, without warning, Vivian’s eyes flashed with a cold, predatory light. She grabbed Mom’s limp, unresponsive hand and violently yanked it against her own cheek. SLAP. The sound was sickeningly loud in the small room. A massive shock rocked Mom’s body. A fountain of dark, thick blood burst from her mouth, staining her chin. I lunged forward to catch her. Dad’s hand clamped onto my shoulder like an iron trap. He didn’t even look at the blood pouring from Mom’s lips. He turned a blind eye to all of this. Mom’s face twisted in excruciating pain. She gave a weak, desperate pull, trying to free her hand. “Ah!” Vivian shrieked, hitting the floor like a sack of flour. Dad let go of me instantly. He was there in a heartbeat. He scooped Vivian up, holding her as if she were a piece of fine porcelain. “You haven’t changed, Joanna,” Dad said, his voice a low, dangerous vibration. “Vivian comes here to apologize, and you attack her?” “Three years wasn’t enough,” Dad continued, his hand tightening around Vivian’s waist as if shielding her from a monster. “Since you won’t learn, Joanna, I’ll find a place where your malice can’t reach anyone.” He turned his gaze to the guards standing in the shadows. “Take her back to the estate. Lock her in the cold storage. Don’t let her out until she learns how to beg for Vivian’s forgiveness.” Two guards lunged forward. They didn’t treat her like the mistress. They grabbed her by her matted hair and her bruised shoulders, dragging her across the rough concrete. Mom’s thin shirt tore away, exposing the network of cigarette burns and whip marks to the dim gray light. Not one man in the room flinched. Not my dad, not my uncle. To them, those scars were just part of the ‘act’ she was putting on. Mom didn’t fight. She didn’t scream. Instead, she laughed. It was a wet, rattling sound that seemed to bubble up from the blood in her lungs. “Julian. Lucas,” she said, her glassy eyes flitting between her husband and her brother. “You are both… so incredibly stupid. You think you’re the masters of this game?” “Do you want to know why I really cancelled her credit card three years ago?” Her voice was getting weaker, but the edge in it was still sharp. “Because—” CRACK. A blow suddenly caught Mom across the face, snapping her head back. The sound was like a whip. A shadow moved from the corner. My grandfather stepped forward. He didn’t look like a grieving parent, he looked like a god passing judgment. He didn’t look at Mom’s blood on the floor. He just wiped a smudge of Mom’s blood from his thumb with a silk square. “Enough, Joanna!” Grandfather hissed. “You’ve been spoiled too long. You lie. You hurt the only person who cares about you.” He looked at Vivian, cradled in Dad’s arms, then back at Mom, who was barely holding onto consciousness. “You are no daughter of mine anymore,” Grandfather said, his voice cold and final. “From today on, Vivian is the only daughter of this family.” Mom’s eyes went flat. The light didn’t just fade; it vanished. She stopped looking at Grandfather. She stopped looking at any of them. It was the look of someone who had already left the room. The guards lunged, dragging her toward the stairs like a bag of trash. Her lifeless feet kicked the empty green bottle. Clink. Clink. Clink. It rolled into the darkness. None of them looked down.
Mom lay on the floor, blood masking her face. Even then, a thin, cold smile still stayed on her lips. “I’m not a daughter of this family,” she rasped. “But none of you deserve to be my family, either.” Grandfather’s face went dark with rage. His chest heaved as he raised his hand. I didn’t think. I threw my weight over Mom’s spine, my arms locking around her neck. Slap! The blow didn’t hit her. It landed on the side of my face with a dull, wet crack. A sharp, copper taste flooded my tongue. My jaw felt like it would snap. I didn’t cry. I screamed into the stagnant air of the basement. “Stop hitting her! She drank the antifreeze! She’s dying!” Silence dropped over the basement. The only sound was the heavy drip of water from a pipe. Dad’s face turned the color of ash. He stepped toward us. “Iris?” His voice was a jagged whisper. “What did you say? Your mom took… what?” I scrambled across the blood, my knees scraping against the floorboards. My fingers shook as I finally picked up the green bottle. I held it out to him. “She drank it. Right before you broke down the door. It’s Antifreeze!” Dad reached out, his long fingers trembling. But before he could touch the plastic, Vivian moved. She snatched the bottle from the air. Her thumb moved across the label in a quick, practiced scrape. My eyes widened. I saw her nail dig into the ink, peeling back the letters. “You—” Before I finished it, she handed it back to Dad with a long, theatrical sigh. “Antifreeze? Julian, look.” She pointed to the mangled label. “The letters are all wrong. It says ‘A-N-T.’ ” “It’s just bug spray. Joanna, if you wanted to hurt us, you should have used the real thing. Don’t force Iris to lie for your theater.” I stared at the bottle in Dad’s hand. The word was gone, replaced by a smear of gray plastic. It looked like a cheap prop. Dad’s jaw tightened. Uncle Lucas grabbed the bottle and hurled it at Mom’s head. Thud. The plastic struck her temple. Her head lurched to the side, hitting the floor hard. A fresh line of red opened near her eye. “Are you insane, Joanna?” Uncle Lucas’ voice was thick with disgust. “You think a fake bottle and a lying brat will make us pity you? You’re pathetic.” Dad let out a short, sharp laugh. “To lie about your own death just for a moment of attention,” Dad said. “You’re even lower than I thought.” He didn’t see Mom’s fingers twitching against the floor. Beside her was the bottle of antifreeze. I remembered the day three years ago when she first bought that bottle. The smell of the basement was the same then. A debt collector had pinned me to the wall, his hand crushing my collarbone. “If you die, the debt goes to the girl,” the man had snarled. Mom had dropped the cap. She had crawled to them, her forehead touching the mud on their boots. “I won’t die. I’ll do anything. Just don’t touch my daughter.” She had endured three years of hell for me. And now, the light in her eyes was flickering out because of them. I stumbled toward Dad. My legs felt like lead, but I forced them to move. I dropped to my knees in front of his polished leather shoes. Thud. I slammed my forehead into the concrete. The impact sent a shockwave through my skull. I did it again. Thud. Warm liquid began to drip down my nose, mixing with the grit on the floor. “Dad, Mom’s in pain! Please, just look at her! Save her!” Dad just stepped back. He looked down at me, his eyes flat and cold, as if he were looking at a stain on his carpet. “Look at her, Joanna. Look at what you’ve turned our daughter into. A liar. A beggar.” “No!” I shrieked, my voice breaking. “Stop…” That moment, Mom let out a soft, wet sound. She reached out a trembling hand, her fingers brushing the dust near my knees. “Iris… stop. Don’t beg them. I’m… fine.” She tried to push herself up. Her elbows gave way. The next second, she rolled onto the cold concrete. A low, guttural moan tore from her throat—a sound of raw, physical agony that cut right through me. “Mom!”
Watch👉 https://cps-front.novelix.live/app-api/ext/new/202608126M1u4aRpz5 🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “Novelix” app 🔍 search for “ni474225”, and watch the full series ✨! #Novelix
Leave a Reply