Semua Bab The “Cannon Fodder-Real Heiress” Mission: Bab 11 - Bab 20

After the kidnappers were tracked down, the truth quickly came to light. They were lowlifes from the slums who had known Chloe for a long time. Chloe had hired them to kidnap me, promising to split the ransom fifty-fifty once they got the money.By the time James saw Lucas again, the man had been beaten within an inch of his life.Suppressing his rage, James glared at Lucas and demanded, “Was the kidnapping real or fake?”In the wake of my death, the haze clouding Lucas’s judgement vanished, and he finally realized Chloe had been manipulating him all along. The love he once held for Chloe was gone, replaced only by deep hatred.He struggled to speak. “It was real. They beat Miss Jean with steel pipes and even slashed at her hands with a knife. It seemed like Miss Jean didn’t want to live anymore. She even threw herself into their attacks. If I had been any slower, those hoodlums would’ve hacked her to death.”James’s eyes turned bloodshot with fury. He kicked Lucas hard and roar

When Chloe’s room was thoroughly searched, a stack of papers was discovered hidden deep inside a secret compartment at the very bottom of her nightstand.They were letters—over a dozen of them—ranging from quick, single-page notes to lengthier, multi-page thoughts. I had written all of them and addressed them to James, but not a single one had ever been sent.James sat on the floor of Chloe’s room, reading them one by one. The thinnest letter contained only one sentence, and the handwriting was slightly shaky, as if written late at night.“James, you’ve lost weight lately. Please don’t forget to eat on time.”There was no date and no signature, and the edges of the paper were already slightly yellowed.It was likely written on a night after he had walked into my room with a cold expression, lectured me, and immediately left, leaving me sitting alone on the bed. After writing it, I must have known it was useless, so I set it aside, only for Chloe to quietly swipe it.He took that

The hypnotherapist was a top expert in the industry who had seen all kinds of tricky cases. He believed nothing could surprise him anymore. However, he later told his colleagues that James’s case was the hardest to explain in his entire career.It was only on the third session that James finally entered a deep trance. Bound by the hypnotic state, the hypnotherapist guided him back to that moment—the slap he had dealt me after I returned from the hospital. Under hypnosis, the expression on James’s face shifted noticeably for the very first time. His brows knitted tightly, his breathing grew shallow and rapid, and his fingers began to tremble slightly.“I didn’t want to hit her,” he whispered, his voice low, as if it came from deep within him. “I didn’t want to hit her… I didn’t want to hit her. But my hand… It just raised itself.“When I looked at her, I just thought–”He stopped abruptly, a look of pained confusion crossing his face.“I don’t know why. I don’t know why I thought

James started doing things that made everyone around him think he’d gone mad. I only knew about it in intermittent bursts through the System’s residual signal, like a radio stuck between channels, picking up scattered fragments.He kept my bedroom exactly as it had been, untouched. Every day, he would personally replace the flowers with fresh roses—the blush-pink ones I loved most when I was alive. They bloomed in full, their scent filling the room. He would stand before my framed photo and speak to it, giving me a detailed rundown of everything that happened that day. For example, how many people visited the foundation, whether the weather was cloudy or clear, what he ate for lunch, and where things stood with Chloe’s court case.He would take all the items I had carelessly left lying around while I was alive and carefully put them back into their original places.On the third shelf of the bookcase sat an old fairy tale book with a worn cover and curled edges. That was the book h

After the coin vanished, James became a different person entirely.It wasn’t a mental breakdown, nor was he spiraling out of control. It was something far more agonizing—he had finally found clarity. He was as sharp as a knife that had been honed to a dangerous edge, cutting through anything while simultaneously cutting himself.He knew that I was dead. He knew that he had been manipulated for those three years, and that his actions during that time had not entirely been driven by his own free will.He knew that something beyond his understanding existed in this world, that Chloe had been fabricated into their lives, and that I might have never truly belonged there in the first place. All that clarity only led him to confirm the truth that I was never coming back.That night, he sat in his study until dawn. Outside the window, the sky shifted from a deep navy blue to a pale gray before finally turning light gold. However, he didn’t move an inch.Spread across his desk was a thick