Livia retreated to her bedroom, her steps are slower than usual, her mind was churning with confusion and irritation. She had expected her family to fuss over her, to crowd around her with concern and affection, but instead they had stood there like strangers, their eyes were cold and questioning.
It was unnerving, and she didn’t like it. She needed to figure out what had changed, why the attention she had always commanded so effortlessly was suddenly slipping through her fingers like sand.
The family took this opportunity to talk amongst themselves in the dining area, gathering around the long mahogany table where they had celebrated so many occasions. The room felt smaller than usual, the air was thick with a tension that none of them knew how to resolve.
The luxury of the surroundings—the crystal chandeliers that cast fractured light across the walls, the antique furniture that had been in the family for generations, the paintings that hung like silent witnesses to their conversation—seemed irrelevant now that their family dynamic had been fundamentally shattered by something none of them could explain.
Christine was the first to break the silence. She had always been the most sheltered of the siblings, the youngest who had been protected from the darker aspects of their family dynamics. Her hands were shaking as she gripped the edge of the table, and her knuckles are turning white with tension. "Can anyone please explain why I am hearing Kamilah’s thoughts?!" Her voice rose with panic, cracking on the last word. "This isn’t normal! This isn’t possible! People can’t just... Hear other people’s thoughts! That’s not how the world works!"
Samantha leaned back in her chair, her arms are crossed over her chest. She was still reeling from what she had heard, from the memory of Kamilah’s internal voice calling her out for her cruelty.
She had spent years believing that she was a good sister, that she was fair and just in her treatment of Kamilah. But the truth was far less flattering, and she was struggling to reconcile the image she had of herself with the reality that Kamilah’s thoughts had revealed. "It’s actually cool," she said, though her voice lacked conviction. The words felt hollow even to her own ears.
"It’s also strange," Tyler added, his brow furrowed in concentration. He was the second youngest, a young man who had always prided himself on his rationality and his ability to think logically about any situation.
But this was beyond logic. This was beyond anything he had ever encountered. "I don’t understand. Why can we hear her but it seems like Livia doesn’t? What’s different about Livia?"
"Yeah, that’s what I also thought," Frank agreed. He was the third son, quieter than his brothers but no less observant. He had always been the one to notice things that others missed, the one who saw the subtle shifts in mood and behavior that betrayed people’s true feelings.
"Livia doesn’t react the way we do. She didn’t flinch when Kamilah thought about... Dying. She didn’t hear anything. It’s like she’s excluded from whatever this is."
"So what now?" Garett asked, his voice was heavy with the weight of responsibility. As the eldest son, he had always been the one expected to lead, to make decisions, and to protect the family. But this was beyond anything he had ever trained for. This was a crisis that could not be solved with business acumen or social connections.
Dahlia and Chris weighed their children’s words, their faces were drawn with exhaustion and confusion. They had spent their entire lives building an empire, creating a legacy that would outlast them, but none of it mattered if their family was falling apart from within. They exchanged glances, a silent communication that spoke of years of shared experiences and unspoken understandings.
Dahlia gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles are white. "Cool? Samantha, how can you call this ’cool’?" She snapped, though her voice lacked its usual authority. She was a woman who commanded respect, who had built her reputation on being unflappable and composed, but now she sounded almost desperate.
"Our daughter is talking about dying in a past life. She’s laughing at us in her head. She’s planning to abandon us the second she gets a check from the Belvederes. This isn’t a game. This isn’t something to be curious about. This is our family falling apart."
Chris leaned back in his chair, his expression was grim. He was the patriarch, the head of the Worthington family, but he felt completely out of his depth. He had built his fortune on making smart decisions, on reading people and predicting their moves, but Kamilah had become an enigma he could not solve.
"The fact that Livia is the only one excluded from this... It’s a variable we can’t ignore. If Kamilah is indeed seeing some kind of future or coming from another life, as those thoughts suggest, then everything we know about our current situation is wrong."
He looked at his children, at their confused and frightened faces, and felt a cold knot form in his stomach. These were the heirs to his empire, the people who would carry on the Worthington name after he was gone. And yet, in this moment, they looked like lost children, unsure of what to do or where to turn.
"The most alarming part isn’t the telepathy," Chris continued, his voice was dropping to a low rumble. "It’s the hatred. The sheer, concentrated contempt she has for us. I’ve never seen Kamilah look at us with such... Nothingness in her eyes. She isn’t the girl we raised. Who is she now?"
The silence that followed was heavy and suffocating. They had spent years ignoring her, treating her as a disposable ornament for the family’s image. Now, they were forced to hear every single grudge, every memory of a bruise or a cold night, and every plan she had to escape them.
They weren’t just hearing her thoughts; they were hearing the tally of their own sins, and the sum was staggering.
Garett let out a long sigh, running his hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration and exhaustion. "We have to observe more," he said, his voice was steady but strained. "It seems like Kamilah knows something. She mentioned that her family died tragically in her past life. It means it’s us. We have to know if it’s true." He paused, his jaw was tightening as he considered the implications of what he was about to say.
"Because she seems like she wanted to protect us, but she said she died."
Garett’s words hung in the air, turning the dining room into a funeral parlor for the living. The notion that their future was already written—and written in blood—sent a chill through the room that no amount of central heating could stifle. They were staring at a ticking clock they couldn’t see, and only the sister they had neglected held the key to stopping it.
Dahlia let out a shaky breath, her gaze was drifting toward the hallway leading to Kamilah’s room. For the first time, the sight of that closed door didn’t represent a daughter to be managed, but a vault of terrifying secrets. New chapters come out on novelping . com first.
If Kamilah were a ghost of a future that gone wrong, then their current peace was nothing more than a fragile illusion, a house of cards waiting for the slightest breeze to bring it down.
"Protect us?" Samantha whispered, her voice was sounding hollow. She looked down at her hands again, remembering the internal monologue that had called her out for her cruelty. The guilt was starting to morph into a desperate, clinging hope. "Why would she want to protect us after everything? Unless... She’s the only one who knows who the real enemy is."
Chris’s eyes sharpened, his mind was racing. He didn’t like being a puppet to fate, and he liked the idea of being "protected" by a daughter who despised him even less. Yet the fear of a "tragic ending" was a powerful motivator, a threat that could not be ignored.
He looked at his children, his voice was now as cold and decisive as a business merger. "Then we play along. We don’t tell her we can hear her. If she believes she’s the only one with this knowledge, she’ll continue to think aloud. We listen, we observe, and we find out exactly what led to that tragedy—and who caused it."
The shift in the room was palpable. For years, the Worthington household had operated on a strict hierarchy of affection, with Livia at the apex and Kamilah at the bottom.
But the moment the maid mentioned Kamilah’s illness, the air changed. The fear of the "tragic ending" combined with the sudden, jarring memory of Kamilah’s internal pain had triggered a dormant, desperate instinct in Dahlia.
When the second maid tried to report Livia’s condition, the words barely registered. For the first time in Livia’s residency in the mansion, her "illness" was treated as white noise. Dahlia didn’t even blink. The "angel" could wait; the ghost of their daughter’s future was more pressing.
Dahlia took the tray from Maria with a firmness that surprised even herself. Her hands were trembling slightly, not from age, but from a mixture of guilt and apprehension. As she walked toward Kamilah’s room, every step felt heavy.
She wasn’t just bringing medicine; she was stepping into the territory of a girl who had already died once and had come back with a heart full of ice.
She stopped before Kamilah’s door, taking a breath to steady herself. She didn’t want to scare the girl away—especially since she was now their only source of information. Gently, almost hesitantly, Dahlia knocked.
"Kamilah, honey?" Dahlia’s voice was soft, stripped of its usual commanding tone. She pushed the door open slowly, her eyes searching for any sign of the fragility she had ignored for so many years. "I brought your medicine. Are you... Are you really feeling alright?"
Chris, Garett, Frank, Tyler, Samantha, and Christine also followed, their footsteps echoing in the hallway. The maids were clearly confused because they should be pampering Livia now rather than caring for Kamilah, but they knew better than to question their employers.
Kamilah opened the door and smiled like nothing was happening. Her expression was serene, and her posture was relaxed, as if she hadn’t just been crying in her room moments before. "I’m not sick, thank you." She took the tray and put it on the top drawer beside her door. "You all should go. Livia needs you."
Yeah, Livia is probably just fooling around hahaha, and my family can be fooled so easily.
Kamilah was about to close the door, but she was taken aback when Dahlia, her mother, suddenly stopped her. The gesture was so unexpected that Kamilah froze, her hand hovered over the doorknob, her eyes widened with confusion.
"Yes, Mama?" She asked, her voice was sweet and childlike, a tone she had learned to adopt as a defense mechanism. In the past, she used to feel small when her mother approached her like this.
She would tremble and cry whenever her mother opened the door and punished her for doing something against Livia, even when she hadn’t done anything wrong in reality.
Kamilah trembled and shook her head as she remembered that memory. The fear was visceral, a conditioned response that she couldn’t control no matter how much she tried. "Do... You need something?" She asked, her voice was wavering. She was clearly trembling but trying to stay composed, afraid her mother would strike her.
The sight of Kamilah trembling—not out of love or longing, but out of a visceral, conditioned fear of violence—hit the family like a physical blow. For the siblings and Chris, who were standing in the hallway, the internal echoes of her fear were deafening.
They could feel the ghostly imprint of those past punishments, the memory of a girl who had been scapegoated and broken for years while they looked the other way.
Dahlia’s heart constricted. She looked at her daughter’s shaking form and felt a wave of nausea. In the past, she would have viewed this trembling as a sign of guilt or weakness, a reason to be firmer. Now, hearing the truth of the "tragic ending" and the sheer hatred in Kamilah’s mind, she saw it for what it was: a scar. A scar she had helped carve.
Instead of the strike Kamilah expected, Dahlia did something she hadn’t done in years. She reached out, not to grab Kamilah’s arm or pull her by the hair, but to gently brush a stray hair away from her forehead. Her touch was tentative, almost fragile, as if she were afraid that any sudden movement would shatter the fragile moment between them.
"No, Kamilah," Dahlia whispered, her voice was cracking. She didn’t move her hand away, hoping to provide some shred of comfort, though she knew it was likely too late for such gestures. "I don’t need anything. I just... I wanted to make sure you were okay. We don’t care about Livia right now. We care about you." Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Behind her, the siblings stood in a stunned semi-circle, their faces were pale. Samantha looked away, unable to meet Kamilah’s eyes, while Garett’s jaw tightened. They were all hearing the internal storm—the skepticism, the fear, and the deep-seated mistrust—and for the first time, they realized that the "quiet girl" hadn’t been quiet because she was peaceful, but because she had been silenced.
"Ahh~ Okay... I’m fine. Thank you."
Kamilah immediately closed the door, her movements were quick and jerky. She leaned her back against the door and slid down to the floor, her legs suddenly gave out beneath her.
She realized she was still the same child who feared her family’s violence towards her, the same girl who had learned to flinch at raised voices and cower at angry footsteps.
It’s okay, it’s okay... You’re okay, don’t be scared... You’re okay... You didn’t do anything. You’re fine, you’re okay.
The words ran through her mind as she tried to calm herself, her breathing was ragged and uneven. She pressed her palms against her eyes, trying to stop the tears that were already streaming down her cheeks. She had thought she was stronger than this.
She had thought that dying and coming back would have hardened her, would have made her immune to the fear that had defined her childhood. But she was wrong. The fear was still there, buried deep beneath the surface, waiting to be triggered by the slightest hint of danger.
Her family outside heard her tears and thoughts, heard the desperate self-soothing that she had developed as a child to survive the abuse they had put her through. They realized, with a clarity that was almost unbearable, that they had hurt Kamilah more than they could ever count.
The silence in the hallway was deafening, broken only by the muffled sounds of Kamilah’s rhythmic, frantic self-soothing from behind the wood. The family stood like statues, frozen by the sheer intimacy of the trauma they were being forced to witness.
Hearing her thoughts wasn’t just a curiosity anymore; it was a torture device, playing back the echoes of every time they had failed her.
Dahlia’s hand was still frozen in mid-air, as if she were trying to touch a ghost. The sound of Kamilah telling herself "You didn’t do anything" was a knife to the heart. It revealed a truth more devastating than any "tragic ending": Kamilah had spent her entire childhood apologizing for crimes she hadn’t committed, begging for mercy from people who had never given it.
Chris closed his eyes, his face was contorted with a sudden, sharp surge of self-loathing. He had prided himself on being a protector of his family’s legacy, yet he had allowed his own flesh and blood to be terrorized in her own home.
He could hear the tremor in her mental voice, the deep-rooted instinct to hide and survive, and he realized that the "confidence" she had shown at the Belvedere meeting was merely a shield she had forged in a fire they had lit.
Samantha let out a small, choked sob, covering her mouth with her hand. The siblings looked at each other, and for the first time, there was no rivalry or indifference—only a shared, crushing weight of guilt.
They wanted to knock, to apologize, and to scream that they were sorry, but they knew that to the girl on the other side of that door, their voices weren’t a comfort. They were a threat.
The maid approached them again, her footsteps hesitant. "Ma’am, sir. Ms. Livia is asking for your presence."
The maid’s announcement felt like a jarring interruption to a funeral. Just moments ago, Livia’s request for attention would have been the absolute priority, the center of the family’s orbit. Now, the mere mention of her name felt like an irritant—a reminder of the catalyst that had fueled the cycle of abuse they had just witnessed.
Chris looked at his wife and children. Their expressions were no longer those of indulgent parents and siblings; they were the faces of people who had just awakened from a long, blissful sleep to find their house on fire. The "angel" in the other room was suddenly nothing more than a noise that needed to be managed.
"Tell her we will be there in a moment," Chris replied, his voice was cold and devoid of the warmth he usually reserved for Livia. He didn’t rush. He didn’t even move immediately.
Dahlia took one last look at Kamilah’s closed door, her heart was still aching from the sound of her daughter’s internal pleas for safety. She felt a sudden, sharp resentment toward the girl who had manipulated them into hating their own child. With a stiff, determined posture, she turned away from the door.
"Let’s go," Dahlia whispered to the rest of the family.
As they walked toward Livia’s room, they didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. The shared silence was heavy with a new, dangerous objective: they would listen to Livia, but they would be watching her from now on.