Wanda turned her attention back to Elliana. Her eyes were cold now, calculating. The corner of her mouth lifted in a humorless smile. “Fine,” she said slowly. “Name your price. How much to make you disappear forever?”
Elliana raised her hand slowly and spread her fingers, calm and unshaken. “Five billion. The Rosa brand was worth five billion dollars. You destroyed it, so you should compensate me for that.”
“Five billion?” Trinity exploded, her voice shooting through the air like a firecracker. “Are you out of your mind? You expect us to hand over five billion dollars just like that? You’d have better luck robbing a national treasury!”
Wanda’s expression darkened instantly. Her smile vanished, replaced by a cold fury that burned just beneath the surface. Five billion dollars. Even as a Campbell, that number was beyond her reach. She might have the name, the status, and the image, but she knew the truth. Not even if she sold every piece of jewelry, every property, and every asset under her name could she come up with that amount.
To the world, Wanda was the perfect picture of a Campbell heiress: flawless, poised, dripping in luxury. But inside the family’s walls, the truth was far more cruel. Only Eva—her adoptive mother—had ever truly embraced her.
Eva was the one who brought Wanda in, the one who shielded her when no one else did. But Arthur had never looked at her as his daughter. Milton had never acknowledged her as his sister. Their cold detachment had become a quiet wound she had learned to carry—constant, unmoving, and painfully familiar.
Every single penny she had growing up came not from the family but from Eva’s personal funds. It had always been that way.
The idea of touching the Campbell fortune—the trust funds, the company shares, the vast wealth everyone assumed she possessed—was nothing more than a distant dream, a fantasy she never let herself believe in. She might have looked the part of a glamorous heiress, dressed in the finest clothes, arriving at glittering events in chauffeur-driven cars. But behind the scenes, her personal bank accounts told a very different story. She had never received a single share of the family business, not even a single dollar from the official estate. And she knew deep down that she never would.
Worse still, she could not even use the Campbell name for her own gain. One misstep, one scandal traced back to her, and she would be cast out without hesitation.
Arthur and Milton would cut her off without a second thought. There would be no forgiveness. No second chances. She had learned that lesson long ago—the Campbell name offered her no protection. Only a borrowed illusion.
Wiping Elliana’s name from the internet, destroying the Rosa brand, and now trying to force Elliana out—all of it had been carried out in secret. Arthur and Milton knew nothing of it. It had all been orchestrated by Eva, working quietly in the shadows, pulling strings with the Campbell name, using the family’s power without their knowledge or consent.
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Now, everything was on the verge of unraveling. This situation had spiraled too far. It needed to be contained—quickly and quietly—before word reached Arthur and Milton. Because if either of them found out what she had done, the consequences would be beyond repair. And yet, despite all her efforts and all her fear, the cold truth remained. There was simply no way she could come up with five billion dollars.
Elliana observed Wanda in silence, a faint trace of amusement dancing in her eyes as Wanda’s expression shifted from anger to panic, and then back again. While she didn’t know the exact details of Wanda’s standing within the Campbell family, she had already uncovered the most important truth—Wanda did not have five billion dollars. And even if Wanda somehow managed to gather that kind of money, the cost of doing so was too much.
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