Chapter 3

Chloe walked over to me, her eyes filled with a sick kind of pleasure and mockery.

"Ava, no matter how important that necklace was, you shouldn' t look at Mom like that."

She then turned to Liam with a sweet smile.

"You could have just talked to Liam about it. He could have just bought you another one, right, Liam?"

"Yes," Liam said, eager to please her. "Only you would like something so cheap anyway. But since Chloe asked..."

He sneered at me.

"How about this, I' ll buy you a new necklace. You can even sell it for cash and live comfortably for a few years."

He snapped his fingers at a nearby server.

A moment later, the server brought a necklace to me on a velvet cushion.

I recognized it instantly.

Recently, Liam had ordered a bunch of custom necklaces from a designer abroad to celebrate Chloe' s "successful" startup pitch.

The most expensive one, worth twenty million dollars, was sparkling around Chloe' s neck right now.

The one Liam was offering me was the cheapest of the bunch. It was a freebie the designer had thrown in, one that Chloe had disliked and tossed aside.

"This necklace was originally for the housekeeper," Chloe said, not even trying to hide her mockery. "But since Ava needs a necklace so badly, I guess she can have it."

I looked at the disdain in everyone' s eyes. My heart, which I thought couldn't get any colder, turned into a block of ice.

"You keep it," I said, my voice low and steady. "Enjoy your celebration tonight. This is your last one."

With that, I turned and walked out of the banquet hall.

I told myself to stay calm. The college entrance exam results would be out soon. Everything would be over soon.

My first thought was of Buddy.

I went to my room to get my beloved robotic dog, my only companion in this cold house. But he wasn't there.

I found a housekeeper, and she told me, "Miss Stone, the madam said since you are no longer the Stone heir, your things are no longer welcome. She always hated that dog, and it' s already been sent to the recycling plant."

Hearing this, my hands and feet went cold.

In the Stone house, even the staff bullied me. Buddy was my only emotional support, the only one I could talk to without being judged.

And now, they were going to destroy him.

I ran back to the banquet hall, my heart pounding in my chest.

My birth mother was standing there, a smug look on her face, telling her friends, "That dog was always jumping on people. It was disgusting. Just like Ava. Today, we finally got rid of that piece of junk."

"Dad is ridiculous," my brother added. "Why did he insist on keeping such a useless thing in the Stone family anyway?"

I lost it.

All my rage, all my pain, exploded. I rushed toward my mother.

"What did you do to my Buddy? Give me back my Buddy!"

Everyone in the hall was startled by my outburst.

Then, a strong force pushed me down. It was my father.

In the struggle, my sleeve tore, revealing large, ugly scars on my arm. Scars from the punishments I had received over the years whenever Chloe had framed me.

The reporters, like sharks smelling blood, rushed forward, their cameras flashing. My disheveled appearance, my torn clothes, my scars-it was all being live-streamed to the world.

My mother recovered from her shock.

"For a pet, you dare to question me? You' re getting more and more out of line."

"Someone, hold her down!"

Two large bodyguards rushed forward. They pinned me to the floor, holding my head down firmly against the cold marble.

"You love your dog so much, don' t you?" my mother sneered, pulling out her phone. "Now I' ll let you see more of it."

The next moment, she held the phone right in front of my eyes. A live video feed appeared on the screen.

It was Buddy. He was tied to a metal table, covered in dents and scrapes. He was whimpering, his electronic eyes flickering.

I felt my heart bleed.

"Let Buddy go!" I screamed, struggling against the bodyguards. "Let Buddy go, or you will all regret this!"

My father suddenly kicked me hard in the stomach.

The intense pain made me curl up, gasping for air.

"How dare you speak to your mother like that?" he roared. "Kneel down and apologize to your mother right now!"

I looked up at the vicious, hateful faces surrounding me. My family. My heart filled with a bone-deep despair.

Just then, a voice from the crowd cut through the noise.

"The college entrance exam results are out!"