It turned out Adriana’s madness didn’t end there.
The snake of a woman had cooked up yet another scheme, deliberately designed to make me look monstrous and cruel in Mama’s eyes.
That afternoon, in the empty second-floor hallway, Adriana deliberately let her own body drop to the floor when it was just the two of us there.
The moment she hit the ground, she immediately began shrieking hysterically, her voice piercing through the corridor as she pretended I had just shoved her violently.
“Oww! Camila, what is wrong with you? How could you do this to me?” her sobbing burst out at once, echoing down the hallway.
I stood frozen, unable to respond or even open my mouth, my mind still struggling to process her cunning.
But before I could defend myself, Javier had already appeared at the top of the stairs, rushing toward us after hearing the commotion.
“What’s going on here?” Javier asked immediately, his sharp gaze cutting between the two of us.
“Javi… I don’t even know what I did wrong, but Camila suddenly shoved me,” Adriana whimpered, looking up at Javier with a pair of glistening eyes brimming with manufactured sorrow.
“If you really don’t want to help me prepare for our wedding, you could just say so, Camila. There’s no need to be this vicious about it,” she added, successfully twisting the truth inside out.
“What happened? What kind of shove?”
I immediately shook my head rapidly at the demand for an explanation in Javier’s voice.
“I—I didn’t—”
It wasn’t long before the sound of hurried footsteps echoed nearby.
Mama and Papa appeared, their faces etched with worry.
“What’s happening now? Why all this commotion?” Papa asked, his brow furrowed deeply.
“What happened, Adriana?” Mama chimed in as well, immediately kneeling beside her future daughter-in-law.
“I’m fine, Auntie. It was just… maybe Camila didn’t mean to, but she bumped into me and I fell,” Adriana answered, her voice made as weak and fragile as possible, as though she were trying to protect me—when in truth, her words only sealed my guilt even tighter.
I could only let out a heavy breath, trying to hold back the tightness crushing my chest.
Just as I had feared, in the very next second, Mama’s gaze pierced straight through me, blazing with fury and deep disappointment.
“Camila! How could you do something so heartless, hm?! Why? Is everything Adriana has been saying about you all this time actually true? Is everything Adriana has told me about you true?!” Mama snapped mercilessly.
My heart pounded hard.
I was, of course, utterly confused, unable to understand how Mama could be speaking of secrets like that.
What exactly had Adriana been whispering and slandering about me behind my back, straight into Mama’s ear?
“Ma, I didn’t—”
”Auntie, please, don’t be angry at Camila.
She’s still young, her emotions are probably still unstable.
“Look, Camila! Adriana is so kind, always defending you, and yet you go and do something so cruel to her!” Mama shouted, her finger pointed straight at my face.
“If Mama ever sees or hears of you doing something this vile to Adriana again, I will not hesitate to take firm action and throw you out of this house, Camila!”
”Ma…” Javier’s deep voice finally cut through.
He had been silently watching the whole time, but now his gaze shifted to me, where I could only hang my head low, hiding the trembling of my own body.
“Go to your room, Camila,” he ordered, flat but firm.
I could only give a stiff nod before slowly walking past all of them.
My chest felt as though it had shattered into pieces.
Were they all blind?
Couldn’t they see the back of my hand, still wounded and wrapped in a bandage from what Adriana had done to me earlier?
Had they truly lost every last shred of love and care for me now?
I walked into my room with tears streaming down my cheeks.
Beneath the heartbreak of not being believed, my mind was still gripped by a chilling question: what exactly had Adriana said to slander me to Mama, that it had turned the very woman who had adopted me into someone who suddenly despised me so much?