The truth the man told him was exactly the same as what he’d told my father.
Alex took out photos of me and Ann and asked him which one had hired them for the act.
Without hesitation, the man pointed to Ann.

Alex said nothing, slapped a bank card on the bedside table.
"Tell me, who else was there that night?"
The man hesitated. Alex took out another card.
"Twenty million. Enough?"
The man’s eyes lit up, and he quickly gave Alex the names of the others.
Over the next day, Alex tracked down all of them.

Every single one pointed to Ann’s photo without hesitation.
Having been in the business world for years, Alex’s merchant suspicion and sharpness made him wonder if I had bribed these people to lie for me.
But just as this thought arose, a phone call completely dispelled all his doubts.
"Mr. Lawrence, your phone is fixed. The recording inside..."

"You’d better come and listen to it yourself!"
Alex rushed back to the yacht as fast as he could.
Trembling, he took the phone from his subordinate and pressed play.
Ann’s sinister, triumphant laughter spilled out.
"Isabelle, did you think playing pitiful would let you turn things around? You’ll never win against me!"
"You still don’t know, do you? Brother told the doctors to give you a dog’s vocal cords! Hahaha!"
"From now on, even if you want to sing, all you can do is bark woof woof!"
The big men erupted in laughter.
I seemed to be begging her for something, which made her laugh even more hysterically.
"Leave? You’re crippled like this—where could you go?"
"I only trust myself. So, I want to see with my own eyes how the whole family rejects you!"
The phone emitted a loud vibration as it hit the ground, followed by
Ann’s piercing screams for help.
The sound of Alex and our parents breaking down the door.
And the big men performing in front of them, pretending to be my fans seeking revenge for me.
Alex shuddered, his face drastically changing.
He had asked each one of them today, and none of them knew who Isabelle Lawrence was.
They weren’t star chasers at all—how could they be my fans?
This was all a show orchestrated and directed by Ann herself!
Trembling, his teeth gritted audibly.
He nearly crushed the phone in his hand.
Closing his eyes briefly, Alex decided to find our parents and explain the situation first.
After making sure my father had taken his emergency heart medicine, Alex played the recording.
"How could this be?!"
Our parents were incredulous, but the recording clearly captured Ann’s bizarre, self-satisfied laughter from her own performance.
"That bitch! We’ve treated her so well for twenty years, and she harms our biological daughter like this!"
Furious, our parents demanded Alex call the police and have Ann arrested.
Alex smiled bitterly. "If she gets arrested, won’t we be implicated too?"
"After all, I’m not sure if she knows that the people who hurt Isabelle were hired by me..."
Our parents fell silent.
"Are we just going to watch Isabelle die in vain like this?" My mother cried out.
Alex clutched his hair in agony.
"I don’t know either... Actually, that day at the hospital, I was the one who deleted the draft notes and records from her phone."
"I thought doing so would protect Ann’s status and position, but instead, it only made her more bold!"
"Those handwritten drafts were probably stolen by Ann too! No wonder she’s been imitating Isabelle’s handwriting and style all these years... How could I have been so blind?!"
my father was heartbroken, gasping for air.
"Go, find my Isabelle and bring her back. I want to make it up to her..."
Alex agreed and quickly ordered his people to intensify the search for me.