The Princess Lives in a Truman World Chapter 07

The Princess Lives in a Truman World Chapter 07

They waited and waited until every test taker had left the testing center and only a handful of people remained outside the school.

I was still nowhere to be seen.

The viewers who had tuned in for the spectacle began losing patience.

[Why hasn’t she come out yet? Are they messing with us?]

[Exactly. I’ve already sent so many gifts.]

Mom hurried to reassure them.

[Everyone, please be patient. Sofia must have been held up inside. Maybe she went to the restroom.]

They waited another half hour, until a security guard began locking up the building for the evening.

Mom and Dad rushed over to him.

“Excuse me, are there any test takers still inside?”

“Everyone left a while ago,” the guard replied. “Are you sure you have the right testing center?”

“Sofia told me it was this school,” Mom murmured. “I confirmed it with her several times.”

While they were still trying to make sense of it, my math mentor happened to come out of the building.

Mom recognized her and hurried forward, catching her by the arm.

“You’re Sofia’s math mentor, aren’t you?”

My mentor looked her over.

“You’re Sofia’s mother?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Sofia was supposed to take the finals here, wasn’t she? Why hasn’t she come out? We’ve been waiting outside for ages and still haven’t seen her.”

My mentor could not help laughing.

“Sofia didn’t take the scholarship finals.”

Mom, Dad, and Aria all froze.

“She didn’t take the exam?”

“Her competition paper caught the attention of a leading professor at Göttingen,” my mentor explained. “He personally recruited her into a fully funded research program in Germany. That means she doesn’t need to take the state merit-scholarship finals.”

“She’s going abroad?”

My mentor studied their bewildered faces and sighed.

“Mrs. Corleone, I’ve called you repeatedly, but you never answer. No matter how busy things are at home, you should pay more attention to your daughter.”

“You didn’t even know about something as important as your daughter going abroad?”

I watched the disbelief spread across my parents’ faces on the livestream and found it both hilarious and deeply satisfying.

Being the one who got played did not feel so good, did it?

The comment feed exploded again.

[This wasn’t the scene I came to see, but this ending is still pretty funny.]

[Sofia is brilliant. She probably figured everything out a long time ago.]

[Now that is a plot twist. Everyone thought Sofia was the victim of the prank, but she was the one fooling them.]

Only then did Mom remember to call me, but my number had already been disconnected.

The expressions on my parents’ faces were so grim that I burst out laughing thousands of miles away in Germany.

Aria, however, was standing beside them with a smile she could barely suppress.

I knew she had to be relieved. I had deceived our parents, and I had left the country. Now she could keep all their love and attention for herself.

She had never wanted me to come home in the first place.

Aria quickly tried to comfort them.

“Mom, Dad, if Sofia doesn’t want to come home, you should let her go.”

Before either of them could respond, Mom’s phone rang.

The voice on the other end demanded, “When are you going to pay us? That two-million-dollar loan has already grown to four million with interest.”

All three of them stared in shock. They were so stunned that none of them remembered to end the livestream.

The audience kept growing as more people joined to watch the humiliation unfold.

“What two-million-dollar loan?” Mom demanded.

The collector immediately sent her a photograph of the promissory note and personal guarantee bearing her signature.

“It’s right there in black and white. You signed it yourself. Are you claiming you don’t remember?”

Mom finally realized that the documents I had tricked her into signing included the loan papers.

“Sofia borrowed that money!” she screamed. “Go after her! Why are you calling us?”

The loan had come from the Moretti crime family, a rival of the Corleone crime family.

Before arranging it, I had already figured out exactly who would dare extend credit to the Corleone crime family.