Ruthlessly erased from the family portrait by her wealthy clan, the granddaughter inadvertently exposes a chilling poisoning plot and the multi-million dollar shareholding that had been usurped for eighteen years!
CHAPTER I: THE VOID ON THE MARBLE WALL
Beneath the soaring, gold-leaf-carved vaulted ceilings of the fog-city’s most majestic mansion, a suffocating yet brilliantly colorful atmosphere enveloped the entire grand hall. Tonight marked the eightieth birthday milestone of the clan’s matriarch—a woman who had wielded supreme power in dictating the entire financial and commercial system for decades. Guests gathered in droves, haute couture gowns gliding across polished marble floors, the chime of crystal glasses ringing out crisp and clear amidst endless praises for the longevity and glory of the lineage.
I stood quietly in a secluded corner near a row of granite pillars, wearing a minimalist black dress with no distinct highlights. To them, I had never been a true part of this wealthy high-society pedigree. Ever since my mother passed away under mysterious circumstances when I had just turned nine, my maternal relatives had gradually pushed my father and me outside the heavy iron gates of the mansion. They spread cruel rumors that my father had embezzled the clan’s financial fund, turning us into outcast beggars stripped of our honor on the fringes of society. I grew up with those fabricated stories until I built myself an armor of coldness and grit.
Yet, over the past few months, my grandmother had suddenly and repeatedly called me. Her voice over the receiver was sometimes muffled, sometimes frantic, persistently grilling me about the locked blue room on the mansion’s top floor and an ancient brass key. She looked aged, exhausted, and submerged in a constant, lingering fear.
Tonight, as the party reached its climax, grandmother appeared in a dark velvet dress, her face pale and her steps wobbly despite having my aunt supporting her. As she brushed past where I stood, her dim eyes suddenly flashed with a strange light. In a fleeting split second, when my aunt was distracted by an important guest, she stumbled toward me, her trembling hand swiftly slipping a thin, silver envelope into the folds of my shawl.
— “Do not open it here…” — her voice wheezed, faint like a night wind sighing past the floor-to-ceiling glass window. — “Stand by the large glass pane… after they unveil the new portrait.”
With that, she was pulled away by my aunt before anyone could notice.
Just a few minutes later, my uncle approached her with a cup of warm water, softly reminding her that it was time for her scheduled medication. Grandmother gently shook her head, firmly refusing on the grounds that she had already taken that medicine in her private room before coming down to the party. Uncle smiled gently, a composed smile masking complete control, then turned and walked away with an orange plastic prescription bottle neatly tucked into his sleeve. The exact moment he slipped the bottle into his coat pocket, his gaze accidentally brushed against me standing not far away. A cold, menacing look flashed through the corner of his eyes.
And then, the central event of the ceremony began.
My aunt stepped onto the high podium beneath the brilliant crystal chandelier, joyfully announcing the surprise gift dedicated to her beloved mother: a family portrait newly completed by a renowned painter. A red velvet curtain covering the large painting was slowly pulled down amidst the thunderous applause of dozens of distinguished guests.
Grandmother stood in the central position, surrounded by the beaming, smiling faces of descendants in the lineage.
But when I looked up at the painting, my chest suddenly tightened as if someone were choking me.
The spot that should have belonged to me—the back-left corner behind grandmother, where I had stood during the photo shoot weeks prior—was now entirely empty. It had been cleverly filled in with a dense, thick velvet curtain pattern, painted so meticulously that to an untrained eye, it would look like the original composition of the artwork. I had been legally and seamlessly erased from the clan’s history.
A few guests expressed surprise, questioning my absence in the family photo, but my aunt smoothly replied that the frame’s composition had limited space, forcing them to omit minor details.
I stood frozen, my face burning with fury and humiliation. But I did not cry. I refused to let myself shed even a single tear in front of those who were gleefully trampling on my self-respect. I stepped forward a few paces, looking straight at my aunt who was smiling contentedly on the high podium, and coldly raised my voice loud enough for those standing nearby to hear:
— “You guys sure went through a lot of trouble… In the end, you really managed to distort this painting into the exact shape you’ve always dreamed of.”
With that, I turned around and walked straight out of the banquet hall, ignoring the astonished gazes fixed upon me.
CHAPTER II: THE MIRROR REFLECTING THE TRUTH
I stepped out into the quiet garden area behind the mansion, where luxury cars lined up under dim streetlights. The freezing night air hitting my face helped clear my mind.
Right at that moment, a familiar figure tiptoed over from behind the old storage shed. It was my cousin—my aunt’s youngest daughter, the only one in this large family who had never looked at me with contempt. In her hand, a mobile phone was vibrating violently, the screen displaying digital image files just sent by the party’s main photographer.
— “Look at this…” — my cousin panted, thrusting the phone screen in front of me, her trembling fingers zooming in on the unedited original photo.
In that fateful photo, I stood prominently by the large glass window, secretly holding the thin silver envelope with grandmother. But what terrified me wasn’t my own presence, but the detail reflected through the side window glass.
My aunt in the photo was not looking at the camera lens as she appeared to be. Her gaze was fixed in sheer terror and panic on the reflection of my uncle standing behind her.
And within that glass reflection, my uncle was holding grandmother’s orange plastic prescription bottle in one hand, while his other hand carefully extracted a small white pill, replacing it with a different type of capsule. The angle captured by the window pane clearly recorded a timestamp on the phone: the picture had been taken precisely twelve minutes after my uncle announced to the entire family that grandmother’s treatment medication was locked securely upstairs for safety.
My heart pounded wildly. I immediately pulled the silver envelope that grandmother had tucked into my shawl out of my pocket.
Inside was a piece of paper hastily torn from an old notebook, grandmother’s handwriting scribbled yet fiercely resolute: “They are poisoning me day by day with substitute pills, making me lose my memory and grow senile to manipulate all the assets. Seek out the truth before it’s too late.”
And on the final line of the letter were seven words that made a chill run down my spine: “Trust the person they wanted to erase.”
Along with the paper, a heavy object landed neatly in the palm of my hand: an antique brass key worn down by the passage of years, its body embossed with the intricate patterns of a bygone era.
My cousin looked at me with wide-open eyes: — “I know what this key opens… That’s the key to the blue room on the third floor. The place where your mother used to live before she passed away. Everyone rumored that room was cursed and no one was allowed near it for nearly two decades.”
Without hesitating another second, we took advantage of the party’s chaos, sneaking through the dark, deserted corridors on the mansion’s western wing—an area that had been abandoned and forbidden for nearly two decades.
CHAPTER III: THE SECRET ROOM OF THE PAST
The heavy wooden door of the blue room appeared at the end of the pitch-black corridor. The antique brass lock was rusted by time, but when I inserted the key grandmother had given me, it turned with uncanny smoothness, emitting a dry “click” that echoed through the silent space.
We stepped inside. A thin layer of dust covered every corner, the scent of agarwood mixed with old paper hitting our nostrils directly. The room seemed to preserve its state from precisely eighteen years ago, as if time had been forgotten in this place.
In the middle of the room stood a large drafting table, its surface piled high with unfinished architectural blueprints, dried-out paint tubes, and faded fabric samples belonging to my late mother.
— “Search here, there’s definitely something hidden,” — I whispered, beginning to open the drafting table’s drawers one by one.
My cousin helped flip through stacks of old documents piled on top of each other. After removing a faux-wood liner at the bottom of the deepest drawer, my fingers touched a stack of documents wrapped securely in a worn black leather pouch.
I pulled it out, opening the leather layer under the weak flashlight beam of the phone.
Striking my eyes was an important legal agreement signed many years ago between the founding shareholders of the family corporation. Each page was stamped clearly with red cross-seals.
The final page of the document clearly stated the actual share ownership percentages of the clan’s legal entity: Grandmother owned fifty-one percent, my aunt owned twenty-five percent, and my mother owned twenty-four percent of the core shares.
But the most crucial part lay in the supplementary clause handwritten in black ink at the bottom corner: “In the event that shareholder Lauren passes away or is absent before the direct heir reaches the age of maturity, all twenty-four percent of these shares shall be automatically and fully transferred into an independent trust fund under the direct management of the sole heir.”
I was twenty-seven years old this year. I had long since surpassed the age of maturity. Yet, for the past eighteen years, not a single person in this cruel family had revealed even half a word to me about being the legal owner of a quarter of the corporation’s massive assets.
They had turned me into a spiritual homeless person, pinned the label of thieves on my family, and then step by step stripped away and divided amongst themselves the shares that should have belonged to me since my mother’s death. And my uncle and aunt had ruthlessly poisoned their own biological mother—the poor grandmother—just to cover up old crimes and continue seizing absolute power.
Right as the space fell dead silent, a slight noise rang out from outside the room’s doorway.
Creak…
It was the sound of light footsteps treading on rotten wooden planks outside the hallway.
My cousin and I startled and whipped around. The phone’s light beamed straight toward the ajar door.
The brass doorknob slowly rotated, emitting a chilling sound in the dark night. The door gradually pushed open, revealing the silhouette of a woman standing tall at the doorway, her sharp, icy gaze locked tightly onto the document trembling in my hands.
It was my aunt.
She narrowed her eyes at us, a murderous half-smile tugging at the corner of her lips as her voice rang out evenly and coldly inside the dark room:
— “Claire… ah no, my dear niece…” — her steps advanced slowly into the room, her tall figure completely blocking the only exit at the doorway. — “Put that document down immediately, unless you want your end to be just as tragic as your late mother’s in this room.”
