Chapter 7
The assistant worked fast. Early the next morning, a thick stack of documents was presented, along with a copy of surveillance.
footage.
Jeremy and Grant picked up the files and began to read through them.
My life from high school to the present, the truth that was long buried, unfolded in front of them piece by piece. It had never been
Jessie who was bullied. She was the one who led it.
Jessie had burned me with cigarette butts. My arms and thighs were covered in bruises from where she had dug her nails into them. She had also dragged me by the hair and slammed my head into a wall again and again.
All of it was simply because she was jealous that people liked me more.
That was not all. Jessie had once cornered me in an alley with a group of thugs. They beat me, took degrading photos, and used them to threaten me that if I told anyone, those pictures would be sent to everyone I knew.
Then she turned around and started spreading rumors that I threw my family’s name around and bullied her. She even said 1 pushed her to the brink of suicide.
Everyone believed her at the time. At school, I was completely ostracized. People called me a disgusting monster.
I developed severe psychological issues, but no one believed me. They all thought I was faking it to avoid punishment.
Jeremy’s face twisted with agony. All this time, he had thought his little sister was being immature, but it had turned out that he had been terribly wrong
She had cried out to them for help back then.
And what had they done?
Over and over again, they had hurt Ashlyn to protect the person who had tormented her.
T
The wounds she carried were all inflicted by the two people who should have protected her because they believed Jessie’s lies. They thought Ashlyn was selfish and cruel. And so they kept hurting her again and again.
With the realization, the pain crashed over them like a tidal wave.
It was then that Grant opened the surveillance footage. It showed him and Jeremy discussing how to deal with Ashlyn. It captured Jessie lying about her and how they refused to believe Ashlyn’s side of the story.
And worse, Jessie had never been sick. The leukemia had been a complete lie from the start. She had bribed the doctor and fooled them all.
Because of it, Ashlyn ended up in the sea and went missing.
Each frame of that video hit them like a knife to the heart.
