Four Childhood Heroes For Her? Fine, I Cut Off The Four Who Betrayed Me Chapter 04

Four Childhood Heroes For Her? Fine, I Cut Off The Four Who Betrayed Me Chapter 04

Unwilling to accept it, I used the hotel landline to call him, but that was blocked as well.

I ran out onto the cold street and dialed from a public payphone, only for it to be rejected after a single ring.

I borrowed a passerby’s phone, but received the exact same result.

The night in France was dark and freezing. I wrapped my thin coat tightly around myself and walked back toward the hotel when my assistant from New York called.

“Ms. Sterling, something terrible has happened! Someone online leaked allegations that you plagiarized your capstone project. The international representatives who previously agreed to open distribution channels immediately withdrew our application!”

“Even the investors who promised funding have pulled out! The board members are demanding to liquidate the company. Please come back quickly!”

I nearly collapsed on the sidewalk and immediately booked the earliest flight back to New York.

While waiting at the airport, I habitually tried calling the other three friends.

Still, nobody answered.

A text message from Ethan popped up on my screen.

[We’re hosting a celebration party for Ava right now. It’s too noisy to talk. I’ll explain everything to you once we’re finished.]

A bitter ache filled my chest.

Finished?

My parents’ company wouldn’t survive long enough for their party to finish.

Just like the oath the four of them made on their knees in front of my parents’ gravestone—promising to protect me for the rest of their lives—had lasted less than twenty years.

Throughout the flight, I worked without stopping, gathering every piece of evidence that could protect myself and the company, barely closing my eyes for a second.

Yet the moment I stepped out of the terminal at JFK, exhausted and red-eyed, a swarm of reporters surrounded me.

“Ms. Sterling, is it true that you stole your best friend’s capstone project and claimed it as your own?”

“Did you really use her work to enter competitions and apply for fellowships in Iceland?”

I tried to explain to them that the design was mine and that I had never plagiarized anything.

I even pulled out the prepared timestamp records documenting every key stage of my design process.

Then Ethan arrived, accompanied by the other three childhood friends.

They produced my thick stack of medical records, telling the crowd that I had suffered from mental impairment since childhood and lacked the capacity for independent design.

They added that I had only taken Ava’s work out of fear of failing to graduate.

“Ava has already forgiven her. Besides, no permanent harm was done. Please stop pressing Emma Sterling!”

To make their story more convincing, they displayed photos of me from before I received treatment.

I looked disheveled, pathetic, and practically feral.

I tried to defend myself, but among the crowd, my eyes locked onto a familiar face—one of the men who had murdered my parents all those years ago.

He smirked at me and made a slow slicing motion across his neck. That familiar gesture triggered a severe panic attack, leaving my body trembling uncontrollably.

A puddle of liquid trickled down my legs onto the floor.

A foul odor spread, and the crowd gasped in disgust. “So what they said was true! Emma Sterling really is crazy!”

“Imagine a crazy person stealing someone else’s work. How ridiculous!”

Watching me freeze in place as people pointed and laughed, Ethan felt a sudden pang of guilt. He pulled off his jacket, intending to wrap it around me.

Just then, his phone vibrated in his pocket.

It was a call from Ava.

“Ethan… I think someone is following me. I’m so scared…”

Without a second thought, Ethan dropped his jacket, turned on his heel, and hurried away from the airport.

He failed to notice that right after he left, a pair of large hands seized me from behind, covered my mouth, and dragged me into the shadows.

In the final second before I lost consciousness, a single thought echoed in my mind.

Mom, Dad, you saved the wrong people.

And I trusted the wrong men.

If I ever get another chance, I will never have anything to do with these four again.

…

When Ethan arrived at Ava’s location, he realized it was a false alarm. He wanted to turn back to the airport to find me, but the other three stopped him.

They argued that I had grown far too temperamental over the years and needed to be taught a lesson.

They added that Ava was starting school soon, and if Ethan went looking for me, there was no telling what dramatic stunt I might pull to ruin things for her.

Ethan decided they were right.

Yet, looking at the empty chat thread on his phone—where no new messages had arrived since he abandoned me at the airport—an uneasy feeling lingered in his heart.

It wasn’t until three months later, when the four of them accompanied Ava on her flight to Europe for enrollment, that they were stopped at border control.

“Apologies, but you are all named in connection with an hit-and-run in France, fraud, and identity theft.”