Chapter 2 Coming to Take Her Home

Under the glow of the crystal chandelier, the inside of Sophia's arm showed several tiny puncture marks.

Still red and swollen — clearly fresh!

Every guest in the room went pale.

"There really are needle marks!"

"Could she have set this whole thing up herself..."

Sophia trembled with panic, desperately trying to pull her arm back, shaking her head through tears. "I don't know... I don't know where these marks came from... Mom, Mom, please believe me..."

How could Grace and Jack not understand what was going on?

Both of their faces darkened.

The officer's expression darkened too. He stepped forward immediately to examine the marks on Sophia's arm and found exactly what Eleanor had described.

He fixed Sophia with an icy stare. "Ms. Brown, please explain where these puncture marks came from. If you staged this whole thing and filed a false report to frame someone else, you will be held legally responsible."

Sophia's whole body shook, tears streaming down her face.

But she had no energy left to defend herself.

Her allergic reaction was getting worse.

Her lips were turning purple, her eyes rolling back, her breathing growing weaker by the second. She was on the verge of passing out.

Whatever she had done, she was genuinely dying.

"Sophia! Sophia, hold on!" She was still her daughter, after all. Grace broke free from the officer and rushed to her side, crying in a panic.

At that moment, Eleanor's wrist was grabbed hard.

She looked down and met Grace's bloodshot eyes.

Grace dropped her voice to a low hiss. "Eleanor, listen to me. You need to take the blame for this."

Eleanor raised an eyebrow.

"Go tell the police that you put something in Sophia's drink. Then apologize and beg her to forgive you. It's the only way to protect her reputation. If people find out she tried to frame her adopted sister, her life is over."

Grace grew more frantic, her nails digging into Eleanor's skin. "We raised you for all these years. It's time you paid us back. I promise, if you confess, we won't press any charges against you."

Eleanor looked at her and suddenly found the whole thing almost laughably absurd.

"Why would I?"

Her voice was cold and flat. "These past ten-plus years in the Brown family, I was treated worse than the servants. Whatever debt I owed you for raising me, I paid it back long ago — with interest."

She pried Grace's fingers off one by one and pulled her hand free.

"Instead of wasting time on me, you should call an ambulance. If she doesn't get to a hospital soon, she's going to die."

With that, Eleanor turned around, picked up her suitcase and the things Grace had kicked across the floor, and walked away without looking back.

Behind her, the Brown Manor erupted into chaos.

Fortunately, one of the servants found a first-aid kit and put an oxygen mask on Sophia while they waited for the ambulance.

The officer had pieced together the full picture by now. He looked down at Sophia, his expression heavy with contempt. "Ms. Brown, given your current condition, you may go to the hospital with the ambulance. But the matter of filing a false report and attempting to frame another person will be formally investigated and handled according to the law."

Sophia lay on the sofa breathing through the oxygen mask, shaking all over — whether from the allergic reaction or from fear, it was hard to tell.

Grace panicked and grabbed the officer's sleeve. "Officer, my daughter is in this state and you're still going to pursue this? She was also the one who was—"

"Ma'am, the law is not a game." The officer pulled his arm free, his tone flat. "Filing a false report wastes public resources. There will be consequences."

He turned and headed for the door.

As he passed Eleanor, he quietly apologized to her.

Eleanor said nothing, watching him go.

"Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way..."

Out of nowhere, a cheerful melody drifted in from down the road.

The bright, tinkling tune felt completely out of place in this quiet, upscale neighborhood.

Eleanor followed the sound. A pink ice cream truck was rolling slowly down the tree-lined avenue.

"Jingle Bells" played from a speaker on the roof. The sides of the truck were painted with giant ice cream cones and rainbows, and a string of colorful pinwheels hung from the front, spinning in the night breeze.

The whole thing looked like something out of a dream.

Guests inside the manor were drawn by the noise and started peering out.

Grace, keeping watch over Sophia while waiting for the ambulance, glanced out the window and immediately scowled. "Whose ridiculous truck is that? What's an ice cream vendor doing in here? Where's security? How did they even let this person into a neighborhood like this?"

The ice cream truck pulled up smoothly and stopped right in front of Eleanor.

The door swung open.

A young man jumped out.

He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with the collar hanging wide open, board shorts, and flip-flops. A pair of oversized sunglasses sat on his nose, and his bright yellow hair was blown all over the place by the wind. A lollipop dangled from the corner of his mouth.

He looked exactly like a street performer with nowhere to be.

In his hand, he held a soft-serve cone.

Strawberry flavor, with a little paper umbrella stuck in the top.

"You must be Eleanor."

He grinned at her and walked right over, pressing the cone into her hand.

"Try it. I had them make a special batch — not too sweet, not too heavy. You're going to love it."

Eleanor froze.

She looked down at the cone in her hand, then back up at the guy in the Hawaiian shirt with the yellow hair.

"Who are you?"

He took off his sunglasses, revealing a sharp-featured face with an easy, slightly roguish look. His eyes tilted up slightly at the corners — almost identical to hers.

"I'm your Uncle Leo Mitchell. My older brother sent me to bring you home."

Uncle?

Eleanor's brow furrowed slightly. Without making it obvious, she took a closer look at the pink truck.

In the glow of the streetlights, the paint had a strange, luminous shimmer. It wasn't ordinary paint — it was an iridescent pearl finish, the kind that couldn't be bought off the shelf, mixed with powder from rare gemstones.

The raised decorations on the body looked childish at first glance, but were actually hand-carved Rococo-style patterns covered in aged gold leaf.

Even the logo on the wheel hubs had been deliberately scratched out.

But Eleanor recognized it immediately.

Bugatti.

Unless she was wrong, the base vehicle was a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport, worth over four million dollars.

This was no ice cream truck. It was a luxury item on wheels.

And the man's clothes — they looked like something a drifter would throw on, but they were the latest runway piece from a haute couture label. The pattern along the cuffs was hand-embroidered. Only three pieces existed in the world.

None of this was within reach of anyone who wasn't seriously, seriously wealthy.

Hadn't she been told her biological parents were on government welfare? That there was a brother with a disability and a mountain of debt?

So who exactly was this Leo?

Leo noticed her staring and rubbed the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish.

"Eleanor... you don't like it?" he asked, a bit cautiously.

Eleanor snapped back to the moment.

She took the cone from him and bit into it.

Strawberry. Sweet but not cloying, cool and smooth going down.

Exactly like the ones she used to press her face against the glass to look at when she was little.

She looked up, and for the first time that day, something warm crept into those usually cold, still eyes.

"Thank you, Uncle Leo. I love it."

It was probably the only thing today that didn't make her feel sick.

Inside, Grace watched the two of them chatting and laughing by the ice cream truck, and felt nothing but scorn.

The ambulance arrived shortly after.

The paramedics were loading Sophia onto the stretcher. Grace walked alongside them, and as she passed the door, she spat in Eleanor's direction. "One little ice cream cone and you're bought? You really are pathetic. Go sell ice cream with your broke relatives — that's exactly where you belong."

Leo raised an eyebrow, having a pretty good guess about who these people were, but he looked over at Eleanor. "And they are...?"

Eleanor didn't even glance their way. "Nobody."

"You—!" Grace's face flushed red with fury.

But Leo had already stopped paying attention to her. He pulled open the passenger door of the ice cream truck and gestured for Eleanor to get in.

Eleanor picked up her suitcase and got in without looking back.

The speaker on the roof started up again — "Jingle Bells," its cheerful little melody floating off into the night.