Chapter 1

"That's her! I saw her shove the cement bucket over and kill that woman!" In the interrogation room, my own mother Suan Lane pointed straight at me without the slightest tremor.

Beside her, my father Mark Lane signed the statement and didn't even look back.

My elder brother James Lane was even worse. He grabbed my head and slammed it against the table. "Still not admitting it? You really had the nerve to mess with the Ford family?"

My forehead struck the metal edge, and blood blurred my left eye. The woman who'd been killed was Charles Ford's own aunt.

Charles sat outside the interrogation room, watching me through the glass. Even coroners look at bodies with more warmth than that.

The most ridiculous part was that they said I threw the cement bucket from "the building I bought."

The building I bought? The developer had run off with the money, and even the foundation pit hadn't been filled in. The whole thing was nothing but a ten-foot-deep hole.

What was I supposed to do, stand at the bottom and throw a cement bucket high enough to kill someone walking past the thirty-story building next door?

Emily Lane shrank behind James, her shoulders trembling with sobs. But the instant she lowered her head, I saw the corner of her mouth curl up.

I licked the blood off my lips and smiled. 'Em, didn't you post a rooftop check-in from the unfinished building next door this morning? Guess you forgot to delete it.'

When the police handed me Emily's statement, I was stunned. It said that I, Olivia Lane, had always been hostile toward her, that I'd repeatedly threatened to lash out at society.

And that she'd personally seen me push the cement bucket off the building I bought. At the bottom was my sister's pretty, flowing signature.

Attached behind it were statements from my mother and father. They were practically identical, right down to the wording. The phrase "I saw it with my own eyes" appeared six times across the three statements. They'd rehearsed it.

"Olivia Lane, do you have anything else to say?" The fluorescent light in the interrogation room flickered twice, making my skin crawl. The cuffs had cut so deep into my wrists that blood was already seeping out.

"Just one thing." I lifted my head and stared at the officer across from me. "That building was never completed."

The officer flipped through the file. "Your purchase contract shows that in March 2023, you bought Willow Gardens Building 7, Apartment 1802. Are you denying that now?"

"No. I bought it. But Building 7 was never built. The developer ran off last year. The entire building is just a foundation pit."

The officer frowned, but before he could say anything, the interrogation room door was kicked open from the outside.

Charles Ford walked in reeking of alcohol. His suit sleeves were rolled up to his forearms, two buttons at his collar had been torn open, and the veins in his neck stood out sharply. Two lawyers followed behind him, one carrying a document bag.

"She's the one?" Charles didn't look at anyone else. He walked straight over to me and clamped a hand around my chin, forcing my face up. He used so much strength my neck cracked.

"My aunt was seventy-two. Her legs were bad. She needed a cane just to go outside and get some sun.

"You dropped a bucket of cement from the eighteenth floor. She wouldn't even have known how to get out of the way." His voice was low, but every word shook.

"Want to know what she looked like when she died? Half her skull was caved in. Her dentures flew nearly ten feet." I opened my mouth, but before I could speak, he let go of my chin and grabbed my throat instead.

My windpipe felt crushed, and my tongue pushed forward uncontrollably. The cuffs pinned my arms, so all I could do was drive my knee at him. I missed.

"Officer—"

"Shut up." He tightened his grip.

"Mr. Ford! Mr. Ford, let go! This is an interrogation room!" Two officers rushed over and pulled him off me. I collapsed back into the chair, coughing so hard stomach acid surged up.

Charles was pinned against the wall, his chest heaving. He wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at me for a full five seconds.

Then he smiled. That smile was ten thousand times more terrifying than his hand around my throat.

"It's fine," he said to his lawyers. "We'll go through proper channels. My legal team will follow this case from start to finish. I'll make sure she's sentenced to death."

He stopped again at the door without turning around. "And if the court won't sentence her to death, I know a hundred ways to send her to keep my aunt company early." The door shut behind him.

My hands trembled as I touched the finger marks on my neck—five clear red bruises.

Outside the window, Susan was helping Emily into the car, wiping her tears as she murmured, "It's okay now, it's okay. Olivia's taking the fall for you."

Every single word slipped through the crack in the window and drilled straight into my ears.