Chapter3

"drop--"

The wavy line on the electrocardiogram monitor eventually stretched into a lifeless straight line. The piercing siren tore apart the deathly silence of the ICU.

I stood stiffly in front of the hospital bed, watching Anna's small face, even with an oxygen mask on, quickly turn ashen. She didn't even have the strength to hold my fingers anymore.

"Brother..." That was the last breath she managed to utter, "We... don't owe them anything anymore."

Her gradually cooling body went limp in my arms, like a withered leaf without any weight.

I didn't scream hysterically, nor did I burst into tears. In the depths of despair, my mind instead settled into a chilling calm.

I signed the death certificate numbly. A thin piece of paper, as light as a joke, yet it bought Anna's eighteen-year-old life.

I clutched the paper tightly in my hand and turned to walk into the coldest blizzard New York had experienced in decades.

At one in the morning, I got into that dilapidated secondhand car and took out my phone. The screen light illuminated my bloodless face. My only goal at that moment was to get Chloe to say "I'm sorry" to Anna in person.

Even just a single sentence.

The call connected. It rang for a full half minute before being answered. What filled the ears was deafening EDM music and Julian's unrestrained laughter with a group of his cronies.

"What's wrong with you now?" Chloe's voice was filled with impatience and arrogance, as if answering my call was a great insult to her. "Let me tell you, no matter what tricks you play, I won't unfreeze a single penny for you!"

Anna is dead.

My voice was hoarse, almost inhuman, as I calmly stated this fact through the howling wind and snow.

"Get out here. Apologize to her."

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. Then, Chloe's extremely grating, cold laugh came through: "Your sister is dead, what does that have to do with me?"

“You stopped her medication.” My fingernails were already digging into the leather of the steering wheel.

"That's the price you pay for stealing secrets!" Chloe's voice suddenly rose, her tone filled with arrogant coldness. "Don't try to use a dead person as a bargaining chip to gain my sympathy! A lowly parasite like you, what lie wouldn't you tell for money? Even if she really died, it was because of your useless brother. Don't spoil my fun!"

"Beep—beep—beep—"

The phone call was abruptly cut off.

I slowly put down my phone. The temperature inside the carriage seemed even lower than the blizzard outside.

The stagnation of "endurance" in his chest was extinguished at that moment. In its place came a sharpness even colder than the city's frigid atmosphere.

"That's all I owe you." I repeated Anna's last words in a low voice, and coldly stepped on the gas.

On the mountain road during the blizzard, visibility was less than five meters. The road surface had long been covered with a deadly layer of dark ice.

As the vehicle veered off the cliff bend, the tires completely lost traction. I didn't brake, nor did I even turn the steering wheel. I simply watched calmly as the out-of-control front of the car crashed through the highway guardrail, and the entire vehicle was lifted into the air.

"Bang—Boom!"

The violent tumbling and impact instantly destroyed the entire carriage. After the ear-piercing screeching of twisting steel, came the suffocating crushing force of gravity.

The pungent smell of gasoline filled the air. A spark burst from under the hood, instantly transforming into a towering inferno.

I was trapped in the deformed seat, blood blurring my vision. Flames licked my skin, excruciating pain tearing at my nerves, but a chilling smirk curled at the corner of my mouth.

My consciousness was plunged into complete darkness amidst the flames .

...

My "death" was like the first domino to fall, directly overturning Chloe's high throne. What followed became the most sensational scandal in the entire New York high society.

At four o'clock in the morning, the police followed the vehicle's license plate and made a phone call to the resort on Long Island.

“Ms. Chloe, your husband fell off a cliff on Highway 22 half an hour ago, and the vehicle exploded. I’m sorry, he died at the scene.”

On the phone, the police officer's voice was heavy and serious.

Chloe, who was holding a champagne glass and leaning against Julian at the time, scoffed disdainfully: "Are you sure he's not lying to me? Tell him that this fake death act is too low-class and tell him to come up with a different trick."

She probably never imagined that the police officer who made that call, who was involved in multiple car accidents caused by the blizzard, was wearing a body camera connected to a local news station.

That arrogant, cold-blooded, and contemptuous statement, "Are you sure you're not lying to me?", was transmitted word for word across the entire internet through the live broadcast!

The backlash from public opinion erupted like a tsunami!

"Billionaire CEO Ignores Husband's Tragic Death," "Desperate Survival After Accounts Are Frozen," "Bloodthirsty Frenzy Beneath the Skies of the Wealthy"... Within hours, countless headlines dominated the front pages of all media outlets! The group's stock price plummeted the moment the market opened, wiping out billions of dollars!

It wasn't until the family's board members bombarded her with calls that Chloe finally snapped out of her drunken stupor. Her arrogance was replaced by terror, and without even putting on her coat, she rushed to the scene of the accident like a madwoman.

The snow had stopped. Below the cliff, only the charred skeleton of a car remained. The air was thick with the acrid smell of burning coal and blood.

"Madam, these are the items retrieved from the scene."

A forensic doctor handed her an evidence bag containing half a charred and twisted cell phone and a half-melted cheap metal ring.

Chloe was struck dumb, her high heels tumbling as she stepped onto the scorched earth, almost collapsing to her knees.

Her gaze was fixed on the cheap metal ring.

It was a fifteen-dollar convenience store ring. I bought it on the street the day we hastily got our marriage certificate, because she refused to prepare any tokens of love. And now, on her ring finger, the multi-million dollar diamond ring Julian gave her still sparkles.

These two rings were like two extreme slaps, striking her soul hard.

Chloe's fingers trembled violently. Through the evidence bag, she felt the inside of the ring, where the initials, slightly blurred by the heat but still recognizable, were her name.

An extreme chill seeped from the very marrow of her bones, instantly rushing from the soles of her feet straight to the top of her head.

“No…it’s impossible…” Chloe’s meticulously applied makeup completely crumbled, tears finally bursting from her eyes as she screamed in disbelief, “How could someone like him, who clung to me like a leech…just die like that? He’s lying to me! He must be lying to me!”

No one answered her. The only response was the blinding flashes of countless reporters on the blockade, which captured her desperate and pathetic state, turning her into a laughingstock for the whole world.

She dialed the number of the attending physician, which had already been disconnected, with trembling hands.

A few seconds later, a cold, official statement came from the other end of the phone: "Miss Anna was pronounced dead at midnight last night. Her body has been taken away."

At this moment, Chloe's high-built cognitive defenses, which she thought she controlled everything, were finally shattered!

She collapsed completely beside the cold, hanging wreckage, clutching her chest tightly. She suddenly remembered the unusually calm voice of the man on the phone last night.

In the ruins, besides the ring, police also unearthed an encrypted USB drive that was tightly protected by a fireproof layer.

The USB drive lay quietly in the police's evidence box. It was my second hell, the one that would soon pulverize her entire world and her hypocritical past.