“Can you still stand so tall now?”
His entire body seemed to crumple before my eyes.
Just then, hurried footsteps sounded from the elevator.
A middle-aged couple arrived with a young woman, all of them looking furious.
The young woman’s eyes were swollen and red, clearly from crying for a long time.
She walked straight up to Chu Hao and slapped him across the face.
“Chu Hao! My mother told me that the hundred thousand yuan you used for the down payment on the house was the money meant to save your father’s life?!”
Chu Hao clutched his cheek.
“No, that’s not it. Let me explain…”
The young woman’s father stepped forward and shoved his phone in Chu Hao’s face.
“Your name is on the property purchase agreement as the person who paid the deposit. You’re the one who benefited from it, so don’t pretend you’re innocent!”
The young woman’s mother stood in the middle of the corridor, her voice shrill enough to pierce everyone’s ears.
“Well, look at that! Your whole family schemed against your own niece and even against a sick man! Let me make this perfectly clear right now…”
“This wedding is off!”
“Go after the deposit yourselves! From now on, don’t you dare let my daughter have anything to do with a family full of people like you!”
My aunt-in-law rushed toward her like a madwoman.
“Dear in-laws! Please, let’s talk this through! I’ll make up the money immediately!”
“Make it up?”
The young woman’s father let out a cold laugh.
“You used money meant to save someone’s life to pay for a wedding. We wouldn’t dare cross the threshold of a family like yours!”
The young woman’s family immediately turned and walked away.
Chu Hao stood frozen for two seconds before suddenly whipping around to glare at his mother, his eyes bloodshot.
“Mom! Did you hear that?! The wedding is off! The developer is keeping the deposit, and we can’t get it back! Are you happy now?!”
The force of his shouting made my aunt-in-law stagger.
Then she slowly turned her head.
Her gaze passed over her own son, then over the furious relatives gathered around us…
And finally locked onto me.
The hatred in her eyes was as though it had been steeped in poison.
She still had one last trick up her sleeve.
I knew it.
Because in my previous life, that was the very trick she had used to drive the final nail into my coffin.
“Wanwan.”
My aunt-in-law spoke again, her voice suddenly calm.
So calm that it was terrifying.
“Yes, I touched the money. I admit that.”
Then her tone changed, and tears began flowing as if on command.
“But why did I dare to touch it? Because I’d already given you part of the money beforehand! I handed you cash in the stairwell! You were the one who said you’d pay upfront!”
“Everyone, think about it. If she didn’t know anything about this and wasn’t willing to pay upfront, why did she empty her own account last night and deposit thirty-three thousand yuan?”
“She knew I wouldn’t be able to get the money back, so she used her own money to cover the shortfall, planning to pocket the money I’d already given her!”
“If she hadn’t received my money, why would she pay upfront at all?! Did she have nothing better to do?!”
Some of the relatives standing in the corridor began to waver again.
It was a vicious tactic.
My aunt-in-law twisted what I had done to save someone’s life in my previous life into evidence that I had already received her money.
She turned cause and effect upside down, with no witnesses to contradict her.
The Lin Wan of my previous life had died because of those very words.
Unfortunately for her, in this life…
“Aunt, let me help you straighten out your logic.”
I took two steps forward.
My voice wasn’t loud, but everyone in the corridor could hear me clearly.
“According to your story, I received a hundred thousand yuan from you and then deposited another thirty-three thousand of my own. That means I had nearly a hundred and forty thousand yuan in my hands, yet I deposited only thirty-four thousand into the account.”
“May I ask what I supposedly did with the remaining ninety thousand?”
My aunt-in-law froze.
“If I really wanted to steal your money, I wouldn’t have paid a single yuan. I’d simply have stayed home and waited for you to come begging me. That’s what someone greedy enough to steal money would actually do.”
“I paid upfront because I believed the envelope really contained a hundred thousand yuan. I thought you would make up the remaining amount the next morning so Uncle could undergo surgery on time.”
“And yet, in your mouth, my kindness has become evidence of a crime!”
I looked directly at her.
“Aunt, do you even believe what you’re saying?”
She fell silent.
“But none of that matters. What matters is that you claimed you withdrew a hundred thousand yuan in cash and handed it to me.”
I raised my phone.
“I’ve brought the evidence.”
Behind me, two people in bank uniforms approached.
The manager walking in front showed his employee ID.
“Hello. We received a call from Mr. Chu Jianjun, so we urgently retrieved the list of serial numbers associated with this cash withdrawal. Since the matter involves a dispute, we prioritized the request.”
My aunt-in-law’s face instantly turned deathly pale.
The manager opened a document and read aloud, word by word.
“Customer Wang Tulian withdrew one hundred thousand yuan in cash from our bank three days ago. The serial number list contains a total of one thousand banknotes, and all their serial numbers have been recorded.”
“After checking the records…”
“The majority of this money was deposited the following day into the POS account of the sales office for Splendid Jiangnan, a real estate development, in the amount of ninety-eight thousand yuan.”
“The signature on the POS transaction receipt…”
The manager raised his head and looked around at the crowd.
“Chu Hao.”
With a heavy thud, Chu Hao collapsed onto the floor.
The manager continued.
“The remaining two thousand yuan in cash was spent that same day at the Famous Beauty Salon.”
The corridor fell deathly silent.
The serial numbers on every banknote were the footprints the money had left behind.
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