4

Victoria picked up the metal box, weighing it in her hand, and her expression darkened immediately.

"Richard, look at this!

"I knew she's been faking it all along.

"She supposedly can't even touch a glass, and now she's hiding a metal box in her room!

"Who knows if there are razor blades or rope inside.

"She might be planning to threaten us with suicide again!"

Richard walked over with a stony expression, staring at the combination lock on the box.

"She's gotten completely out of control.

"Break it open!"

A bodyguard raised his sledgehammer.

One thundering blow and the lock was smashed apart.

But inside the box, there were no self-harm tools as they had imagined.

The box held only three things.

They were a diary covered in dried bloody handprints, a thick stack of documents, and a small flash drive.

Ethan wandered over out of curiosity and casually pulled out the documents.

One look, and the impatience on his face froze solid.

"What is this?

"This is impossible!"

His voice cracked, and his hands began to shake violently.

Richard snatched the documents, flipped through several pages, and went deathly pale.

"The foundational framework for Ashford Group's core AI algorithm?!"

This was the most critical technical challenge Ashford Group had faced in the past two years.

The company had poured hundreds of millions of dollars into it, bringing in countless experts from abroad, yet none of them had been able to break through this technical barrier.

Last month, Ashford's stock had plummeted because of it.

But now, this near-flawless, fully complete core algorithm had appeared inside the metal box of a "crazy" girl.

Victoria stood frozen.

With trembling hands, she picked up the blood-stained diary.

She opened to the first page.

There was no ordinary ink on it.

Instead, the page held only a few crooked lines scrawled in blood.

"I can't bear light, and I can't face the flickering of a computer screen.

"I lose control. I throw up.

"All I can do is close my eyes and work through the calculations in my head, line by line.

"After ninety thousand failed attempts, I finally made it in time.

"Ethan, this is the birthday gift your sister risked her life to make for you.

"Don't be afraid. Take it, and lead Ashford to even greater heights."

From between the diary's pages, a cheap silver guardian pendant, snapped in half, tumbled out.

It was the protective charm Ethan had been wearing around his neck the day of the kidnapping five years ago.

I had torn it off when I was shoving him into the dumpster, pulling too hard in my desperation.

I had clutched it in my fist as the kidnappers dragged me into the van.

For five years, I had kept it hidden against my skin.

It was the only thing keeping me alive.

The hallway fell silent as death.

Ethan staggered back two steps, his back hitting the foam wall, his eyes instantly turning red.

The sight of that pendant brought the memories he had deliberately buried for five years flooding back to the surface.

First, the stench from inside the dumpster came rushing back.

Then he remembered his sister's trembling hand clamped over his mouth.

"She spent five years in this room with no daylight, no lamp, and no computer.

"She wrote our core algorithm using nothing but her own mind?"

"She wasn't crazy.

"She was never crazy!"

Victoria clutched the broken pendant, and her tears finally broke free.

Her legs gave out and she collapsed to her knees.

"This pendant was Ethan's.

"Richard, the kidnappers didn't make a mistake.

"It was Amelia.

"Amelia took Ethan's place!"

The truth sliced through them like a dull blade, tearing open their self-righteous sense of sacrifice and their towering arrogance.

Ethan suddenly buried his face in his hands and let out a choked, anguished sob.

"I knew.

"I've always known.

"She wouldn't let me tell you.

"She was afraid you'd blame me, and afraid I'd spend the rest of my life drowning in guilt.

"But then, I really did stop telling.

"I even convinced myself that she'd just been grabbed by mistake."

Richard's throat bobbed as he swallowed repeatedly, his knuckles white around the documents.

But years of pride made him clench his jaw, refusing to admit he had been wrong.

"So what!"

He raised his voice, as though sheer volume could drown out the panic clawing at him from inside.

"She did all this just to make us feel guilty, didn't she? Just to make us pay attention to her?

"What kind of person tortures herself just to manipulate her own family?

"Go!

"Break down that terrace door!

"I want to see how long she plans to keep up this act!"

The bodyguards raised their hammers again.

Just as the hammers were about to fall, a blood-curdling scream ripped through the air from the back garden.

"AHHH...!"

Then the walkie-talkie crackled with a bodyguard's voice, pitched high with terror.

"Sir!

"Sir, something terrible has happened!

"There's a body in the fountain out back!"

Every drop of color drained from Richard and Victoria's faces.

They threw open the floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the hallway and stumbled onto the balcony.

Ethan dragged himself to the railing on legs that could barely hold him.

I floated in the air and followed their gaze.

In the dry, abandoned fountain, a skeletal body hung from the sharp bronze angel statue.

The girl wore thin pajamas and hung from the statue like a discarded rag doll.

Most of her face was smashed beyond recognition.

Her head hung against her chest at an unnatural angle.

The blood had long since dried, staining the bottom of the pool red.

And in one cold, rigid hand, she still clutched a colorful balloon that had fallen from the party the night before.

On it were the words, "Happy 18th Birthday, Ethan."

The girl who had taken his place in the kidnapping, the girl they had called worthless time and again, had finally given them what they wanted.

Shoved in her father's fury, she had slipped from the terrace more than a hundred feet above.

Her body had shattered on impact.