Chapter 5
My Future Self Begged Me to Walk Away Chapter 05
The ballroom fell entirely dead silent for a single fraction of a second.
Then, an even more deafening uproar exploded through the room.
“What kind of absolute garbage are you spewing?”
“You drove her to jump into the river, and now you’re trying to throw dirt on the deceased?”
Ulysses Vanderbilt stood up from his seat as well, his face entirely thunderous.
“Claire! Do you even have any idea what you’re saying?”
I looked down at him, my voice completely level. “Whether it’s garbage or not, we’ll find out very soon.”
The moment the words left my mouth, the side doors of the venue were forcefully pushed open. A woman dressed in a janitor’s uniform, her face obscured by a surgical mask and a low-brimmed baseball cap, was escorted into the room by two imposing bodyguards clad in black suits. She kept her head lowered, her entire body trembling slightly.
Ulysses’ gaze sliced across her, his brow furrowing deeper. “What the hell kind of stunt are you pulling now?”
Ignoring him completely, I walked directly up to the woman. Reaching out, I whipped off her cap and snatched the mask from her face.
A pale, panicked—yet still recognizably delicate—face was instantly exposed to the entire crowd. The venue turned so quiet that a pin drop would have sounded like a gunshot.
A few seconds later, someone shrieked in absolute shock.
“Melody?”
“It’s Melody! She’s actually alive!”
The camera flashes went absolutely wild, strobe lights bursting like mad, nearly blinding everyone in the room. Melody instinctively tried to shield her face, but the bodyguards held her shoulders firmly in place, keeping her pinned.
She lifted her head, her eyes brimming with large tears as she looked toward Ulysses, her lips quivering uncontrollably. “Uly, I…”
“This is impossible!” Ulysses stormed up onto the stage, violently wrenching Melody behind his back to shield her as he glared at me with entirely bloodshot eyes. “Claire, where the hell did you find a plastic surgery knockoff to pose as Melody? Do you honestly think a cheap look-alike is going to clear your name?”
“Plastic surgery?” I let out a sharp, mocking chuckle. Tapping my phone screen, I turned the device around to face the dense cluster of camera lenses below the stage.
An ultra-high-definition security reel began to play. The location was a secluded, abandoned pier directly beneath the North River Bridge. The timestamp marked the exact night Melody went missing.
On the screen, Melody was clearly visible in her navy gala gown, walking down to the edge of the pier entirely alone. But she didn’t jump. Instead, she unzipped her handbag, pulled out a pre-packed set of dark gray clothes, and rapidly changed out of her dress. Then, she gathered the navy silk gown and threw it into the rushing river with all her might. Once that was done, she pulled on a cap and a mask, turned toward the narrow dirt path on the opposite side of the pier, and sprinted away.
The entire process was executed with absolute calm, precision, and efficiency — without a single shred of hesitation.
Inside the press hall, the only remaining sounds were the frantic clicking of camera shutters and a collective sharp intake of breath.
Ulysses stared fixedly at the screen, every ounce of color draining from his face inch by inch. He snapped his head around, looking back at Melody as she cowered and trembled behind him, his voice scraping out dangerously dry. “Melody, this… this is fake, right? Someone forced you to do this, didn’t they?”
Melody’s tears rolled down her cheeks in massive drops. “It’s not me… Uly, that’s not me… it’s a deepfake… Claire is framing me…”
“A deepfake?” I closed the video and pulled up a different file.
This footage was captured just yesterday evening, outside the back alley door of a small, sketchy clinic in the suburbs. A masked Melody was seen stealthily slipping inside. An hour later, she emerged looking completely pale, her steps hollow and unsteady, clutching a piece of paper tightly in her hand.
I pinched the screen, zooming in on the document that had been captured clearly by a high-resolution telephoto lens. At the top was the clinic’s name. Below it, a line of text was displayed with absolute clarity.
[Patient Name: Melody Sterling. Diagnosis: Early Pregnancy. Procedure: Surgical Abortion.]
Ulysses froze entirely in his tracks, his pupils contracting violently. Extremely slowly, he turned his head and stared down at Melody’s lower abdomen. His voice dropped so low it was practically a whisper. “You were pregnant?”
Every single bit of color vanished from Melody’s face. Her lips quivered, but she couldn’t force out a single word. She could only shake her head frantically, tears smearing entirely across her face.
I slid my phone back into my pocket, looking at Ulysses’ completely ash-white expression before I calmly delivered the final blow.
“She faked her death, but it wasn’t because I pushed her to the edge. It was because she found out she was pregnant, and I think the three of us know all too well that there is absolutely no way that child belonged to you.”
