This Time, I'll Be the Villain's Favorite Daughter novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Bus Station

Mabel stopped breathing.

D. Ainsworth.

In the kitchen, nobody else said anything either.

Then Fern said, very softly, "That's the woman from the home."

"Darla Ainsworth," said the third brother. "Patron of St. Brigid's. Married to Trenton Ainsworth, the Ainsworth Holdings guy. Lake Forest. Big house. Bigger lawyers."

"Why would a woman like that want a little orphan dead?" said the cop.

"Money," said Grandpa. "It's always money or love, and people like that don't love anybody."

"But what money?" said Fern. "Mabel doesn't have any money. She has three dollars and forty cents in a peanut butter jar."

"Three fifteen," said Hank. "I took a quarter."

Around the corner, Mabel pressed her back against the wall.

Her heart was hammering.

They were going to find out.

Her third brother could find anything. He'd found the money in one afternoon.

He'd find the old news stories next. The missing toddler. The reward. The photos.

And then they'd know she was an Ainsworth.

Mabel knew exactly what happened when ordinary people met the Ainsworths.

The Ainsworths won.

They always won.

Their lawyers called you, and then their lawyers called your boss, and then you didn't have a boss anymore.

In her first life, the Ainsworths had paid off a family that sued them over a car crash.

Mabel had heard Darla laughing about it at the dinner table.

"People like that always have a price. You just have to find it."

If her father found out where she was, he'd come with lawyers.

Hank would lose his job.

They'd lose the apartment.

And she would be back in the staff wing, waiting to die.

Unless she told them first.

Mabel stood up.

Her legs felt like they belonged to someone else.

She walked around the corner into the kitchen in her socks.

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