Chapter 237
Clementine:
I was so tired that I didn’t immediately wake up. I kept sleeping because it was a regular occurrence, a maid would come and leave either a note from my father beside my pillow or some food. Sometimes maids would sneak in to leave a fruit next to my pillow. It was their way of showing affection without getting caught by my stepmother, and I appreciated it.
So I didn’t think much of it when a maid came that day. That’s why it didn’t worry me, and I kept sleeping.
I woke up about two hours later than usual because I’d been so stressed the night before, to something ringing right next to my ear. At first, I thought it was a nightmare. Then I began to wonder, why wasn’t it ending? Why did it seem so real?
I reached toward the sound and felt something solid beside my pillow. It was my phone. As soon as I touched it and held it, I sat up, my eyes wide open.
“What the heck?” I groaned, checking my phone.
It was indeed my phone, with the same scribbles I’d done on the back of it. But I remembered I’d dropped it. Then how had it appeared right next to my pillow? Did someone give it to the maid to leave it here?
I had too many questions, but first, I had to answer the phone call I was receiving. It was Troy calling me. Anxiety hit me as I remembered what happened last night. I decided to tell him everything. I immediately picked up his call.
“Troy, you know—” I had only started speaking when he hushed me with a loud grunt.
“How could you fucking do this to me?” he screamed.
The way he yelled made me fall silent, trying to gather my thoughts. I had just woken up, so I wasn’t sure what to expect or how to put everything together.
“Troy, listen. Last night I came to your place—” I began to speak again, but he grunted even louder.
“I know you fucking came to my place and tricked me. You fucking played me!” he shouted.
I gasped, confused and shocked.
“Wait! Tell me what happened. What are you accusing me of?” I blurted, panic flooding me.
There was no way his anger came from anything other than some very clever act of deception by someone else.
“Oh, you have no idea what you’ve done?” he screamed into the phone.
“I thought of you as my friend, Clementine. Why would you do that? Why now? Why, when I was this close to getting crowned?” His words shook the ground beneath my feet. I instantly jumped off my bed, panicking.
“What do you mean by ’about to’? You got crowned, right?” I asked, my voice trembling. I wished he could hear the shakiness in my tone and realize I was genuinely worried for him.
“Oh, cut the crap. After the stunt you pulled, I’m not even sure they’ll let me stay in sports, let alone get crowned as an Alpha. You ruined me, Clementine. Why would you do that?” he shouted, his voice breaking.
“Troy, I need to understand what happened. What did I do?” I pleaded, completely lost and blindsided by his accusations.
That was when his voice began to fade as his mother snatched the phone from his hands.
“I saw you as my own daughter. I didn’t know you were so manipulative. Just because you couldn’t get crowned, you decided to ruin my son’s chances too,” Lady Lydia cried.
“Aunt Lydia, I need to know what I’m being accused of, because trust me, I haven’t done anything wrong,” I cried back, tears streaming down my face. They wouldn’t even let me understand what my supposed crime was.
“Just so you know, this will come back to bite you. You’ll never be at peace again,” she screamed, cursing me with all sorts of illnesses, sadness, and misfortune.
For about five minutes, she continued crying and yelling before Troy snatched the phone back from her.
“Our friendship is over,” he hissed, cutting the call.
I stared at my phone, consumed by confusion, shock, and grief. Something terrible must have happened. Then I noticed all the notifications flooding my social media account, it was the first time I had ever received so many.
Already anxious, I opened my account to see what was going on. The moment I did, I realized why Troy was so angry.
The cake and cupcakes I’d made for him—there was a picture of them posted on my profile with a caption: Came to see my best friend, and look what I found.
One of the cupcakes was cut open, revealing some kind of colored powder inside. Another caption read: He fucking tried to drug me. What a so-called Alpha.
Then there were more posts where I’d supposedly accused Troy of taking drugs. There was even a video from a day we’d been fooling around, pretending to be drunk. That clip was uploaded too, but cropped to make it look like Troy was actually drunk. And it had been posted from my account with the caption: How can someone drink at such a young age? Is it even legal?
I began to tear up as I scrolled through more and more posts. They were all made from my account, each one crafted to destroy Troy’s character.
In one of them, I had even tagged a council member, asking how they could allow such an Alpha to be crowned. The caption accused him of using drugs, while every playful picture or video we had ever taken together had been twisted and posted out of context.
Even old screenshots where Troy had joked about something silly were edited to make him look terrible.
And all of it had been done from my account.
I started deleting the posts one after another, my hands shaking as I wiped away tears with the back of my palms. My sobs made it hard to breathe. That was also when I finally realized what Messi had meant when he talked about “securing the package.” He had been talking about my phone.
They had planned to kidnap me, force me to unlock my phone, use it to play their sick game, and then sell me off. I could only piece together part of their plan. I still didn’t know who they intended to sell me to, or why. Maybe it was just to make sure I couldn’t expose the truth.
But who would even listen to me now? How could I ever prove what really happened?
I didn’t even know which maid had come into my room to leave my phone, or if it had been a maid at all. Maybe someone had snuck in, disguised as one.
For all I knew, the only thing I still had was my phone.
Tears streamed down my face again when I saw a new notification from the council member. It said that Troy’s fate had been decided. He would never become a crowned Alpha.
However, they wouldn’t strip his current rank from him. Instead, they had planned something “messy” for him.
And at that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder, was it something related to the North?
Unintentionally, I had ruined him.
I tried making a new post to clarify everything but noticed my account suddenly got deleted for sending hate.