THE WOMAN WHO PLAYED THE VICTIM

THE WOMAN WHO PLAYED THE VICTIM

The mansion was full of guests when a heated argument broke out in the living room.

A pregnant woman, dressed in a white robe, was trying to walk away from a woman in a wine-colored dress.

“Leave me alone! I don’t want to argue with you!”

The woman in wine stepped closer, furious.

“You don’t deserve to be here!”

“I’m not going to fight with you.”

“Of course you won’t! Because you know I’m right!”

Suddenly, the woman in wine shoved her violently.

The pregnant woman lost her balance and crashed into a glass table.

CRASH!

The glass shattered into pieces.

“My baby!” screamed the pregnant woman, clutching her belly to protect it.

But before anyone could help her, the woman in the wine-colored dress threw herself onto the floor and began to weep.

“Help! She attacked me!”

The pregnant woman looked at her in complete disbelief.

“That’s a lie! You pushed me!”

At that moment, a man in a tuxedo rushed into the room.

“What happened?”

The woman in wine ran toward him, crying.

“She tried to hurt me!”

The man looked at the pregnant woman.

“Is that true?”

“No! She pushed me!”

The woman in wine started screaming.

“She’s lying!”

The man stood there, confused.

Then, the pregnant woman glanced up at the ceiling.

“The camera…”

Everyone looked up.

A small security camera was pointing straight at them.

The woman in wine stopped crying.

The man stared intently at her.

“Let’s watch the footage.”

“No!”

The reply came out far too quickly.

The man furrowed his brow.

“Why not?”

She was left speechless.

The man took out his phone and called the head of security.

“I want that recording right now.”

The woman in wine began backing away.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“That’s precisely what I intend to find out.”

Seconds later, the video appeared on the screen.

Everyone could clearly see the woman in wine shoving the pregnant woman.

Then, they watched as she deliberately threw herself to the floor and pretended she had been attacked.

The entire room fell dead silent.

The man looked at the woman.

“Why did you do this?”

She began to weep.

“Because she was going to destroy everything.”

Still trembling, the pregnant woman asked:

“Destroy what?”

The woman in wine slowly raised her eyes toward her belly.

“That baby…”

The man turned grave.

“What does the baby have to do with this?”

Tearfully, she replied:

“He’s the heir.”

The man froze.

The pregnant woman placed a hand over her belly.

“Heir to what?”

The woman in wine remained silent.

Just then, the man received a text message on his phone.

He read it.

His face changed completely.

“It can’t be…”

The pregnant woman asked:

“What is it?”

He looked up.

“The lawyer just confirmed that my father left his entire fortune to our child.”

The woman in wine closed her eyes.

Her plan had just been completely exposed.

CLIFFHANGER: The woman did not try to attack the pregnant woman by chance; she wanted to prevent the birth of the baby who, according to the will, would inherit the entire family fortune.

The room felt as though the air had been violently sucked out of it.

Guests who had minutes earlier been sipping champagne and whispering polite pleasantries now stood frozen like marble statues.

The glow from the massive television monitor cast an eerie, flickering blue hue across the shattered shards of the coffee table.

Julian, his tuxedo lapels slightly askew, did not lower his phone.

His thumb dragged across the glowing glass screen once, then twice, reading the full legal declaration that had arrived like an artillery shell.

“Read it aloud,” Elena whispered, her voice barely carrying over the faint hum of the mansion’s ventilation.

She leaned against the sofa, refusing to take her hands away from her abdomen.

A doctor, who happened to be among the invited guests, pushed his way through the front row of onlookers.

“Let me check her,” Dr. Mercer said quietly, kneeling beside Elena and examining her for lacerations or signs of distress.

“She has bruising on her hip, but the glass missed any major arteries, and her pulse is remarkably stable given the trauma.”

Elena let out a ragged breath, tears spilling down her pale cheeks as she looked up at Julian.

Julian didn’t look at the crowd.

His gaze locked onto the woman in the wine-colored dress, who had slowly backed herself into the shadowed recess near the mahogany grand piano.

Her name was Victoria, his elder half-sister, the woman who had spent the last two decades positioning herself as the sole commander of the Vance empire.

“You knew about the clause before any of us did, didn’t you, Victoria?” Julian’s voice was devoid of warmth, chilled to a sharp edge.

Victoria pressed her spine flat against the polished wall.

The tears of manufactured terror were gone from her eyes, replaced by a cold, calculating fury that flickered under the chandelier lights.

“Father was losing his mind in those final weeks,” Victoria hissed, refusing to shrink any further.

“He was trapped in that hospice wing, hallucinating, babbling about bloodlines and redemption.”

“He was completely compos mentis, and you know it,” Julian countered, taking a single step toward her.

“The lawyer sent the full notarized addendum just thirty seconds ago.”

“Father signed it forty-eight hours before he passed.”

Julian turned the screen toward the guests, though his eyes never left his sister’s pale face.

“It explicitly states that the entirety of the primary trust, the international shipping holdings, and the controlling shares of Vance Maritime belong unconditionally to my child.”

“A living child,” Victoria interrupted, her voice cracking with pure venom.

The words slipped out of her mouth before she could stop them.

A collective, horrified gasp rippled through the gathering of high-society elites.

The truth hung in the air, grotesque and undeniable.

She hadn’t just pushed Elena out of sudden anger or a burst of jealousy.