CHAPTER 42: A CHILD BORN WITHOUT LOVE (1)

"Something more interesting?" I asked softly, my voice still hoarse from crying.

Madeline had always acted like the perfect sister to me on her social media. That’s why people found it so easy to believe she just snapped at me on the day she pushed me.

"Do you want to see it?" Lando asked as he pulled his phone from his pocket.

He unlocked the screen with a swift motion and held the phone out toward me. "Here," he said.

On the screen, a video began to play, showing Madeline screaming at a store employee who looked on the verge of tears. My stomach twisted as the clip shifted to another, showing her drunk and laughing with her friends, licking a loaf of unpaid bread in a bakery as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

Before I could even process it, Lando swiped again. The next video made my blood run cold. It was grainy and old, clearly from high school.

Madeline stood with her little clique, scissors in hand, cutting at a girl’s uniform. One of them kicked her legs out, forcing her to kneel on the ground, while Madeline poured a bucket of dirty mop water over her head.

The group roared with laughter, pointing and mocking as the girl curled into herself, shivering in shame.

That poor girl was ... Helcia or me now.

But that wasn’t the last video. Lando hesitated, then swiped his phone again, showing a clip even more cruel than the ones before, something no high schooler should ever do.

The footage was shaky, but I could still see Madeline’s face clearly. She and her group dragged Helcia into the girls’ bathroom, locked the door, and shoved Helcia’s head into a toilet bowl, holding it down while the others laughed and clapped.

The poor Helcia struggled, kicking and gasping when they finally let her up for air, only to be shoved back down again. Dirty water dripped from her hair and face as Madeline pulled the camera closer to show Helcia’s face up close.

Helcia sobbed so hard her whole body shook, and the girls around her laughed even harder as she cried.

When the video ended, I stared at the blank screen in silence. My blood boiled and my teeth chattered so loudly it could be heard.

I wanted to kill Madeline. I wanted her to go to hell and be tortured by the devil himself.

Before the devil could get to her, a darker part of me wanted to do it myself.

"Where did you get these videos?" I asked Lando.

Lando pulled his phone away, and for a moment his face hardened, as if he were swallowing the same anger I felt. ""I had people dig them up for me," he said softly.

"They’re professionals," he added when I stared. "People who know how to search old archives, school records, private uploads, all the stuff regular users can’t find. They went deep into her past and pulled anything that showed the real her."

Hiring people like that must’ve cost a fortune, but for someone like Lando, it probably wasn’t a problem.

"Helcia—"

"I want to kill her," I blurted before he could finish. My eyes locked on his with a fierce look, so he’d know I wasn’t playing. "Madeline. I want her to feel every bit of the pain she put me through."

But now, after seeing the rotten things her family did—her father, her half mother, her sister—something cold and furious settled in my bones.

"Then let me help you." Lando had no intention of calming me. Instead, he poured gasoline on my burning rage. "I’ve asked some people to upload those videos into their contents. They’ll probably start appearing in an hour or two. Do you want to give her a small chance to redeem herself or let her fall completely?"

"Let her fall," I said coldly. "Don’t give that bitch any way out and don’t let her get one bit of sympathy from anyone."

Steal her father my ass.

Helcia’s childhood was kind of cruel and complicated. Her mother, Olivia, worked as a prostitute in one of the most notorious brothels in the red-light district.

For a time, she was hired privately by Gideon and served only him. That arrangement lasted about two years before Olivia suddenly found herself pregnant.

When she told Gideon, he ordered her to have an abortion and even handed her money to make it happen. But Olivia secretly chose to keep the baby.

It might sound sweet, right? A prostitute trying to protect the child in her womb even though the father rejected it.

But no, it wasn’t sweet at all.

The reason Olivia refused to abort the baby wasn’t because she loved it. In truth, she felt no affection for the child at all. She kept the baby only because she thought she could use her as a pawn to squeeze more money out of Gideon later.

A few months after giving birth, Olivia contacted Gideon again, claiming she had solid proof, a DNA test that confirmed the child was his. She demanded a large sum of money, saying she was raising the baby on her own, and threatened to expose the truth to the media if he refused.

Gideon’s response was merciless. Instead of giving her money, he sent men to throw acid on her face and warned her that if she ever tried to reach him again, she would be hunted, tortured, and killed in the most brutal way imaginable.

From then on, Olivia never dared to approach him again. She stayed in the brothel, no longer as a courtesan but as a cleaner, and she took out her misery on Helcia. She beat her, starved her, and left her small body bruised and malnourished.

When Helcia was three, Olivia died of a severe illness, and that was when Gideon suddenly returned to claim his daughter. For a brief moment, Helcia thought her father might love her in a way her mother never had.

But she was wrong again. Gideon hadn’t come out of love.