Chapter 4

Chloe Vance POV

Sitting by the hospital bed looking after Mother, the more I thought about the kitchen incident, the more suspicious it felt.

Normally, only designated chefs and procurement staff entered the basement cold storage, and the shift change lasted no more than five minutes.

I pulled strings to obtain the surveillance footage from the Vance Hotel's kitchen that day.

The footage showed everything with crystal clarity.

Wearing a baseball cap with her head down, Natalie Scott's assistant slipped into the kitchen during the shift change gap, crouched by the stairs, pulled a small plastic bottle from her bag, and poured the oil right before the steps.

Having done that, she put the bottle away and walked out the way she came as if nothing had happened, the whole thing taking under a minute.

Following this lead, I dug deeper and obtained Natalie's medical checkup report from another hospital.

Her ECG, blood sugar, liver, and kidney function panels were completely normal.

The congenital heart disease and hypoglycemic fainting spells Natalie constantly cried about were all fake.

Gripping the printed medical report and surveillance screenshots, my knuckles turned white with force.

Mother was in the ICU fighting for her life for three whole days, all because of this woman's acting—and Ashton Foster chose to shield her without even bothering to investigate.

Foster Hotel was hosting its anniversary reception, where Natalie Scott took the stage to give a speech as their Brand Consultant.

In a champagne evening gown, she stood on stage holding the microphone, her voice delicate: "Thank you, Mr. Foster, for your trust. Moving forward, I will continue to oversee the hotel's brand upgrades..."

I threw open the banquet hall doors with force.

Dressed in a black suit, I walked up toward the main stage, not hesitating for a single second.

Reaching Natalie, I grabbed the microphone and flung the stack of surveillance screenshots right into her face.

"The very steps my mother fell down—you're walking down them today."

Natalie's face drained of color. Instinctively taking a step back, her heel caught on the hem of her long gown.

She tumbled straight down the wooden steps, her knees slamming hard against the marble floor, a massive tear ripping through the hem of her gown.

At the exact same time, the massive screens flashed with Natalie's perfectly healthy medical reports and proof of falsified records, while every attendee's phone buzzed with an incoming file push.

Below, chaos instantly erupted.

Guests stared down at the medical records on their phones, then looked back up at Natalie sprawled on the ground.

Clutching her scraped knees, her hair disheveled, Natalie was as pale as a sheet of paper.

Ashton rushed onto the stage to pull Natalie up, glaring daggers at me.

Tossing the microphone onto the podium, I turned and walked off the stage, the crisp clicks of my heels against the tiles steady and unhurried.

The next morning, Ashton Foster claimed there were suspected accounting discrepancies at the Vance Hotel and dispatched his bodyguards to drag me to the penthouse suite of the Foster Hotel.

The suite had no windows, and the central air conditioning was cranked down to freezing.

The bodyguards confiscated my phone, cut off all food, and gave me only half a glass of water a day.

Overhead lights blazed non‑stop. Every hour, someone rapped hard against the observation window. I was jolted awake the second I shut my eyes.

Ashton pushed the door open once a day.

"Issue a public statement apologizing. Confess that you forged those medical exam reports, and I'll let you out right now," Ashton said, seated in the armchair.

I leaned in the corner, my lips purple with cold, my eyelids heavy, but I didn't utter a word.

Ashton stood up, his face icy, and slammed the door behind him.

Natalie Scott came by punctually every day, carrying food.

She would dump spoiled food onto the table, sit beside it, and leisurely eat cake.

"Ashton said you only get to eat once you bend the knee." Natalie dabbed her mouth, walked over to the thermostat, and lowered the temperature even further.

She bent down close to me. "Chloe, stop being so stubborn. Ashton's heart belonged to me a long time ago."

Resting against the freezing wall, my voice was hoarse, but I enunciated every word: "The illness was fake, and you were the one who ordered someone to pour oil on the stairs. You can't keep what you stole through lies."

Natalie raised her hand to strike me, but afraid of leaving marks that might expose her to Ashton, she gritted her teeth and pulled her hand back.

She kicked the table hard, turned around, and hurried out.

By the third night, I was burning up, overcome by a high fever.

I drifted into unconsciousness in the freezing room, my fingers clawing tightly into the edges of the carpet.

I told myself that I could never die in this place.