Chapter 4

Samuel’s sharp command.

Everyone froze.

They anxiously rushed Leo to the hospital.

“Idiot! You can’t even handle such a small task!”

Samuel’s face was etched with contempt and disdain, as he slapped me across the face.

“What about Chloe’s damaged soul?”

He gritted his teeth in anger, gripping my neck with such force that his knuckles turned white.

“Use my blood to mend it.”

“Your blood?”

He raised an eyebrow, as if he’d heard the most ridiculous joke.

“Someone like you, who stole Chloe’s life, is uneducated and useless, your blood is tainted.”

“Who knows if you’ve been smoking weed all these years abroad.”

He knew that mentioning drugs was the quickest way to sting me, yet he chose to blurt it out.

Infuriated, I slapped his hand away.

“What right do you have to blame Chloe’s death on me?!”

“Her secret admirer?”

Stung by the truth, his cheek muscles twitched subtly, and his eyes involuntarily darted away.

“Only she has the right to blame me for taking her life. No one else does!”

My index finger scornfully poked his shoulder, a hint of mockery playing on my lips.

“Especially not a coward like you, who didn’t even dare to tell her you loved her.”

After my outburst, I couldn't hold back the pent-up grief and silently began to sob.

“If you ever dare to look at me like that again, I’ll plant you at her grave as a tombstone…”

“I wish I could be her tombstone…”

Samuel’s anger deflated too.

We moved all the clutter out of the room, searched for a long time, but found no evidence.

“There’s no time left. The soul-summoning didn’t yield results, but I still have thirty years left of my life. Let me try to summon her soul.”

I wiped a streak of blood from the corner of my mouth, my voice firm.

“You don’t want to live?”

“This life was hers to begin with, and now returning it to her, isn’t that the most fitting ending?”

I managed a weak, sarcastic curl of my lips.

“Didn’t you choose me to inherit your legacy precisely because you couldn’t abandon the Si and Song families, and couldn’t use your remaining lifespan to get her the truth?”

“I can. I have nothing left to lose.”

Despite the self-deprecating words, tears of injustice welled in my eyes as I spoke.

But truly, when I communed, and witnessed Chloe’s entire life, I only felt that my own death was utterly worthless in comparison.

Chloe was a person so good, it was almost foolish.

She neatly wrote down memories of taking Grandma Joyce to the local fair, preparing a special birthday gift for her sister.

She would wait until everyone else had eaten before getting her meal from the cafeteria, meticulously packing it to take back to Grandma Joyce, while she herself subsisted on a cheap bread roll.

She said her dream was to protect the peace of the innocent.

Even though everyone mocked her, saying a woman should just go home and be a stay-at-home wife, she remained resolute and bravely chose to become a police informant.

The result? On Christmas Eve, she died in a foreign country.

Scantily clad and starving, tormented to a horrific death, all alone.

And the villains stole her husband, moved into her house, and then framed her as a drug dealer.

“Liam, cross this forest and you’ll be out of Country D. Hurry, go!”

In the memory, Chloe’s face was anxious, her heart pounding in her throat.

Perhaps due to her unease, she kept feeling someone was following her, but when she turned, there was no one there.

“What about you? What will you do?”

Fifteen-year-old Liam was terrified, tears and snot smearing his face, clutching Chloe’s hand and refusing to let go.

“Let’s go together, sis. I’m scared.”

He hadn’t seen anything like this before, tricked by an online love interest into meeting in Country D.

He got into a black car and was somehow kidnapped to a compound for an illegal scam syndicate.

“I haven’t exposed my identity yet, I’ll be fine.”

Chloe deluded herself, thinking she could simply trade her life for Liam’s.

But she never imagined that neither she nor Liam would make it out alive.

“Serena… It was Serena who killed Liam!”

“Serena is the drug dealer!”