After Rebirth, I Stopped Competing, and the Fake Heiress Lost It Chapter 08

After Rebirth, I Stopped Competing, and the Fake Heiress Lost It Chapter 08

I came downstairs to find Sloane already at the table. A bowl of plain oatmeal sat in front of her,

untouched. The spoon hadn’t moved.

She looked up when I walked in, then dropped her gaze.

I sat down across from her, helped myself to oatmeal, and ate without a word.

Grandma was supposed to go home that day.

Right before she left, I caught Grandma’s hand. “Grandma, don’t go yet. Stay a few more days.

Please.”

Grandma smiled and squeezed my hand. “Good. Because I wasn’t ready to leave you either.”

Dad shrugged it off and left on his own.

The call came less than an hour later. Dad had been in an accident.

Mom collapsed at the side of the hospital bed, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe.

Dad was gray with pain, but he still reached for Mom’s hand.

“I’m okay… Thank God Tessa kept Mom here. If Mom had been in that car…”

He couldn’t finish.

Graham stood in the doorway, fists clenched at his sides, knuckles white.

“The dump truck hit him on purpose,” Graham said. “It’s on camera. The driver ditched the truck and ran. Plates were stolen.”

Dad closed his eyes. “Find him.”

It took three days.

The driver was picked up at a cheap motel on the outskirts of Bellhaven. Two hours in an interrogation room and he gave up his employer.

Gordon. Sloane’s biological father.

When they arrested Gordon, he had his passport, burner phones, and a bag packed by the door. Sloane had wired the money into a newly opened account in three separate transfers.

Transfer records. Call recordings. Gordon’s full confession. All of it.

The police laid it all out on the coffee table. Mom looked like she’d stopped breathing.

She turned to Sloane. It took her a long time to find her voice.

“…Sloane, why?”

Two officers stood on either side of Sloane, blocking her in on the couch. Half her hair had fallen

loose. Her face was blank.

Then she heard the question, and she started laughing. Not softly. Her whole body shook with it.

“Why? You’re asking me WHY? You took everything from me and you want to know WHY?!”

Her head snapped up. Her eyes were streaked red, and her voice came out raw and splintered.

“The second she walked in the door, every single one of you forgot I existed! Mom, you pulled your

arm away from me! Dad, you couldn’t even look at me! Graham, you used to have my back no

matter what, and now? Now you tell me to grow up and deal with it!”

She jabbed a finger at me, so close her nail nearly scraped my cheek.

“And Grandma, how many years did I look after you? YEARS. And the minute she showed up, you cut me out of the will! That was MINE! I was a Winslow for eighteen years! Why does all of that count for nothing just because she came back?!”

Mom pressed a hand over her mouth, tears streaming.

Graham hadn’t moved from the doorway. His hands opened and closed at his sides, over and over, before he finally spoke.

“What about Dad? What did Dad ever do to you? Did you actually want him dead?”

Sloane stopped laughing.

She looked at Graham. Then her eyes cut to me.

“You knew.”

Resentment and hatred burned in her eyes. “You’re the one who wanted Dad dead, aren’t you? It TOLD you. It said you’d listen. So why didn’t you turn me in?”

She stopped mid–sentence. Her pupils shrank to pinpoints.

Something snapped behind her eyes. She grabbed her head and screamed.

“You have it too, don’t you?!”

She threw herself at me. The officers caught her and wrestled her back into her seat.

“You have it! YOU HAVE IT TOO! Why didn’t you listen?! WHY DIDN’T YOU LISTEN?!!!”