Chapter 3

Dale's condition got worse. Brenda gave tearful interviews, talking about how her daughter had abandoned them in their darkest hour.

"I don't know what we did wrong," she sobbed to a reporter. "We gave her everything."

A GoFundMe was started for Brenda, not for Dale's transplant anymore, but for his "end of life care and funeral expenses." It raised over a hundred thousand dollars in a week from people who hated me.

I responded by posting on my new Instagram account.

The first picture was me on a yacht in Miami, surrounded by models, a bottle of champagne in my hand. The caption: "Making plans."

The next was the deed to a new penthouse in Manhattan, spread out on a marble countertop. Caption: "Big plans."

Then Dale died.

The news broke on a Tuesday morning. My phone blew up with notifications, thousands of messages calling me a murderer.

That afternoon, I posted a picture of a tiny poodle wearing a diamond collar.

The caption: "Everyone meet Hermes. He has a lot of new toys."

The outrage was nuclear. I became the most hated person in America. People didn't just dislike me, they despised me. They wanted to see me fail, to see me suffer.

That was exactly what I needed.

My uncle called me. He was my mother's brother, a small-time lawyer in California, the only family I had left. His voice was strained.

"Ava, what are you doing? This is... this is a nightmare."

"It's part of the plan, Uncle Mark," I told him. "Did you contact your friends at the Bureau?"

"I did," he said, his voice low. "They have the files. They're ready. But Ava... are you sure about this? The whole world is against you."

"They don't know the story yet," I said. "But they will."