Chapter 4

I endured the severe pain and shakily dialed the police with my left hand.

The police arrived quickly, but when they learned that the person who'd stolen my belongings was my own biological daughter whom I'd carried for ten months, they showed helpless expressions.

According to regulations, the police could only temporarily classify it as a domestic property dispute and needed further investigation before filing a case.

The officer in charge saw me lying in a pool of blood looking pitiful. After taking my statement, he immediately took me to the relevant department.

He helped me file emergency reports for a lost ID card and freeze the passbook.

The three hundred thousand couldn't be recovered immediately, but at least I'd secured the money in the account so Laura couldn't squander it.

By the time I returned to the basement after getting my wound re-stitched at the hospital, it was late at night.

My right hand was wrapped in gauze, each throb accompanied by stabbing pain.

Just then, my phone started vibrating crazily.

Hundreds of abusive text messages from unknown numbers flooded my inbox.

I opened a short video platform and found that on the homepage feed, Laura had posted a five-minute accusatory video.

In the video, she wore fake no-makeup makeup, tears streaming down her face as she tearfully accused me of being an evil mother.

She lied to the camera, claiming I'd tried to sell her for bride price money to pay gambling debts, even slandering that I'd deliberately self-harmed my severed fingers to extort money from her.

She also played the victim, saying I was jealous she'd received sponsorship to study abroad, so I maliciously spread rumors to ruin her future.

Oh my god, how can such an evil mother exist?

Unfit to be human!

Poor girl, what bad luck to have a mother like that.

Support the daughter cutting ties!

People like this should just die!

The comment section was outraged.

Even my former coworkers at the factory believed the lies and sent me messages cursing me out.

You always seemed honest, but I never knew you were so vicious, harming your own daughter. Disgusting!

Facing the online mob, I didn't cry.

I looked coldly at Laura's face on the screen, methodically saving her defamatory video with my left hand.

Then I took screenshots and screen recordings of all the vicious comments and personal attacks the video had attracted.

Next, my gaze fell on the laptop in the corner.

It was an old computer Laura had disdained as too outdated to take with her.

Laura was careless. She thought emptying the recycle bin solved everything.

But she didn't know that as long as the hard drive wasn't destroyed, data could be recovered.

I spent the whole night using my left hand to control the mouse, using recovery software I'd found online to gradually excavate the secrets buried deep in this computer.

When the progress bar reached one hundred percent and I opened the hidden billing statements and chat records that had been recovered,

I broke out in a cold sweat, then laughed out loud in the basement.

Mr. Osman's several trading companies were all shells used as fronts for overseas fraud syndicates to launder money!

The funds Laura had been dreaming about for going abroad all came from dirty accounts.

Not only that, I also recovered several eye-burning videos.

The protagonists of the videos were actually Osman and Laura's friend Isabella, who kept calling him sugar daddy!

This seemingly innocent Isabella wasn't just a business partner—she'd been sleeping with Osman all along.

Laura had become a tool Isabella used to please her benefactor.

I extracted those money laundering flow statements, along with the exam proxy transfer records and pornographic videos, and organized them into categories.

As morning sunlight filtered into the basement, I pressed send.

I sent them in encrypted compressed file format to the Economic Investigation Division's verified report email, copying the tax bureau.

Laura, it's time to wake up from your dream of marrying into wealth.