Todos los capítulos de The Heirloom That Nearly Killed Me: Capítulo 11 - Capítulo 20

"We tried to persuade him to take it off, but he said Chester would not allow it. He said it was proof that the Zeigler family accepted him as their son-in-law." As he spoke, he looked up at me with his eyes filled with despair."He was just like you. You were all unfortunate children who just wanted a family."My eyes stung.We were all the same. We had all willingly fallen for a trap called "From today onward, you are part of the Zeigler family."We thought we had finally found a place where we belonged, but little did we know that the bracelet we wore had never been a blessing from the very beginning. Instead, it was a countdown to death.Matt's father took several old photographs out of a cloth bag. In the photos, Matt was so thin that he looked almost unrecognizable. Around his right wrist was a ring of ulcerated skin almost identical to mine.My stomach churned.Zane took pictures of the photographs and saved them.Before we left, Matt's father gripped my hand tightly."

I smiled."You didn't, so neither will I."The first court hearing was scheduled for a rainy, overcast day. Outside the courthouse, media reporters from all over the country crowded together. Cameras of every size packed the entrance so tightly that it was almost impossible to pass through.No one had expected that a so-called family heirloom bracelet would uncover a years-long insurance fraud scheme involving live-in sons-in-law. Even fewer people had expected that behind the seemingly respectable and wealthy Zeigler family lay a filthy scheme of exchanging their sons-in-law's lives for money.Dressed in a black suit, I entered the courtroom through a special passageway, accompanied by my lawyer, Ms. Selin, and Zane.Soon, I saw Wendy. She was wearing the blue vest of the detention center with handcuffs around her wrists.Although we had only been apart for two months, she looked as though she had aged ten years. The once proud and untouchable heiress was gone. In her place sat

"Why couldn't you just keep wearing it? Why did you have to investigate?"The officers immediately stepped forward and restrained Chester, but he continued struggling wildly."A live-in son-in-law is nothing but a dog of our family! We support him, feed him, and give him respect, so what if we use him to make a little money? He was an orphan nobody wanted in the first place! If Wendy hadn't taken him into the family as a live-in husband, he would be nothing but trash!"The courtroom instantly descended into chaos.I sat there and looked at him with cold eyes.I watched Chester, who had once brought me soup and treated me nicely, finally tear away the last layer of his disguise. In the meantime, I watched Wendy, who had once held me in her arms and promised to support me for the rest of my life, slump in her chair, unable to say a single word.Suddenly, I felt that this was truly the most ironic scene I had witnessed in the past six years.That bracelet they called a "family heir

Then, it was Ms. Selin's turn. She submitted the evidence in an orderly manner.The first piece was the criminal judgment against Wendy and Chester, and the evidence was irrefutable.As the party who had committed serious wrongdoing in the marriage, Wendy had no grounds to argue.The second piece was the insurance contract, the premium payment records, and evidence that Wendy had deliberately concealed the beneficiary designation and induced me to sign the documents.The third piece was the Zeigler family's bank transaction records showing their attempts to transfer assets before the case came to light.Every transfer, every account, and every point in time was clearly marked on the large screen. One week before I went to the police, Wendy had moved five million into an account under her mother's name, Rachel Mitson.There were also several redemptions of investment products, with the proceeds transferred into accounts belonging to distant relatives of the Zeigler family.They t

"On the other hand, Chester has been very quiet. He's just aged incredibly fast. After his mother sold the house and used the money to pay compensation, she left the city they used to live in. No one knows where she went."I quietly listened to everything before lowering my head and blowing at the coffee in my cup, causing a tiny ripple to spread across the surface of the water. Soon, it became still again, just like my life.The times when I had been maliciously thrown into chaos by others were slowly settled down by time itself.Those names, voices, and images that once made me wake with a start in the middle of the night could barely stir much of a ripple in my heart.It was not because I had forgiven them, nor was it because I had forgotten. I had simply stopped imprisoning myself inside that nightmare.The real poisonous bracelet was later permanently sealed inside an evidence locker.It had once encircled my wrist. Now, it encircled the Zeigler family's crimes.After Zane