My Mother Killed Me For Her Stepdaughter novel Chapter 71

Another week passed since my "disappearance," and my brother still relentlessly tried to reach me.

When he couldn't get through, he suddenly remembered that before I went missing, I had gone out with Emily.

"Emily, when you last saw Sophia, did she mention where she was going?"

Emily had moved back in with Matthew the day after their wedding. Upon hearing this, her expression grew uneasy.

"Brother, you must be mistaken. Sophia never liked me. Why would we have gone out together?"

Her denial was so unnatural, so awkward, that even Matthew noticed something was off.

Just as my brother was about to press her further, his phone rang.

I followed the sound and saw the caller ID: "Sophia." Seeing my name on the screen sent a chill down my spine.

My brother's lips curved slightly, and without hesitation, he answered, "You finally decided to—"

But his voice was cut off by one I could never forget, even in death.

"Good day, Mr.Stellar. I'd like to discuss a business deal with you today."

It was the leader of the kidnappers.

When I was still alive, my brother had received several calls from him demanding ransom.

"Who the hell are you? Where's Sophia? Let me speak to her!"

A cold, sinister laugh echoed from the other end. "Your sister? I've already eaten her. There's no getting her back."

My brother frowned instinctively. "What kind of nonsense are you talking about? What do you mean, ‘eaten'?"

"Eaten, as in literally. What else could it mean when a man ‘eats' a woman?"

That one sentence dragged me back to the days I was trapped in that dark, cramped room, reliving every horrifying moment.

My brother's face turned ashen, reflecting his shock.

Emily, sitting nearby, suddenly snatched the phone out of his hand. "This must be another one of Sophia's pranks, right? Just another way for her to get your attention with her little tricks!"

Without waiting for a response, she hung up and blocked "me" from my brother's phone, doing it under the guise of helping him.

My brother didn't say anything in front of her.

But when I followed him back to his room, I saw him quietly remove "me" from the blocked list.

The next moment, a series of explicit photos of my naked body popped up on the screen.

Startled, my brother's hand jerked, and the phone slipped from his grasp, crashing onto the floor and shattering like a spider's web.

I collapsed in a corner, devastated. Why, even in death, was I still here, forced to witness the kidnappers humiliating me again and again?

I didn't know if ghosts could cry, but I used every ounce of strength to suppress my emotions, and yet, the tears came rushing out like a flood.

My brother reached down to pick up his broken phone, but even though his fingers brushed against it, they trembled as if weakened, and the phone slipped from his grasp again.

The faint tremor in his pupils under the chandelier was unsettling, and I was so overwhelmed by panic that I could no longer read his emotions.

couldn't tell whether the expression on his face was one of disgust or regret.

Regret that, when he had received my desperate calls for help, he had thought they were pranks, cutting off my lifeline again and again.

I watched as he wiped his face and stood up to leave, his tall frame swaying slightly.

On his way downstairs, he rushed and stumbled, almost missing a step, and nearly tumbled down the spiral staircase—just like I had when I first arrived in this house.

With his phone broken, he picked up the landline and called my school.

"Hello, Ms. MIA, has my sister returned to school?"

Sister—such an unfamiliar term!

He had always called me a thief or a traitor, and only used my full name in front of others to save face.

"I... I was only thinking about the company—"

My brother, who had always been the perfect, composed CEO in the eyes of others, suddenly cut her off, yelling: "The company?! Is the company more important than your sister's life?"

Everyone was stunned, including me, though I wasn't even human anymore.

My brother had never cared about me, had never spoken a kind word to me.

The looks of shock on Matthew and Emily's faces told me this wasn't just my imagination.

It was well known that my brother had always been strict and cold toward me.

The living room was dead silent. Matthew stepped in, trying to smooth things over. "Hey, man, take it easy. I get it, you're worried about Sophia, but even if the worst has happened, throwing the company under the bus isn't gonna bring her back, right?"

He was right about one thing. I was already dead, my body chopped into pieces. There was no coming back from that.

But my brother seemed like he'd lost his mind. He wasn't listening to reason and started lashing out at everyone.

"And who the hell are you to call her Sophia? And tell me this, if it was Emily who was missing, would you still be standing here coldly calculating your options?"

Matthew was stunned into silence.

He didn't respond, but after two years together, I knew exactly what he was thinking.

Yes. Yes, he would.

It became crystal clear after we broke up—Matthew's love had always come second to money.

The only reason he chased after me was because he thought I was the heiress of Steller Group. Once he realized Emily was the golden child and I was just an afterthought, I wasn't worth his time anymore.

Even with Emily and Matthew fighting him every step of the way, my brother still went ahead and called the police.

The kidnappers had planned to blackmail him with my explicit photos.

In the world of the rich, reputation is everything—worth more than money, maybe even more than life itself.