Ghost Exorciser: The Oust Fake Heiress Strikes-Chapter 296: Maria

Meanwhile, after hanging up, Lana calmly opened her banking app.

The faint hum of the air conditioner filled the room as she stared at the numbers on the screen. Fifty million dollars sat quietly in her account.

There was no excitement, no hesitation. Without a second thought, she transferred the entire amount to a charity.

It was a charity she had secretly founded herself.

This was something Lana would never openly admit.

In front of others, she appeared indifferent, distant, almost cold, someone who barely formed attachments.

Yet deep inside, there was an obsession she could never let go of... helping people who were just like her.

People standing on the edge, people abandoned, people with no one left to lean on.

’Maybe,’ she often thought, ’if I help them now, they might become my friends in the future.’

In a way, Lana was right. The only difference was that those friendships were never formed because of the secret donations.

They were formed because their paths eventually crossed, because their fates matched, not because of money silently given at the darkest point of someone’s life.

At that very moment, there was a woman named Maria who was thinking of ending her life.

It wasn’t due to weakness, nor because she lacked courage.

She was simply exhausted... crushed beneath the weight of everything that had gone wrong.

Maria had once believed she lived a good life.

She was born into a poor family, yes, but she was loved deeply by her parents.

She was cherished by her fiancé. They were supposed to get married next month.

The wedding invitations were already planned in her mind.

Then the accident happened.

Her parents died in a car crash.

At the hospital, while the scent of disinfectant still clung to her clothes, a man walked up to her and shoved a compensation check into her hands.

"There," he said coldly. "This should be enough."

There was no apology. No justice. No remorse.

Maria refused to accept it.

She took the case to court, her hands shaking but her heart determined.

Who would have thought the other party was a powerful figure? Someone who could crush her without effort.

Her poverty became her weakness. Her honesty became her flaw.

No matter how loudly she cried for justice, nothing changed.

In the end, she was forced to accept the compensation.

Five dollars. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

When she saw the amount, Maria clenched her fists so tightly her nails dug into her palms.

’I can endure this,’ she told herself. ’I can endure anything.’

But the cruelty didn’t stop there.

The woman responsible for everything appeared before her, dressed in white, looking like an angel fallen from the heavens.

That woman was in love with Maria’s fiancé.

"You seduced him," the woman sneered. "Used fake innocence to steal him from me."

Those words shattered Maria’s restraint.

’If you loved him,’ Maria screamed inwardly, ’you could have confessed, you could have pursued him, you could have tempted him. Was there truly a need to destroy my entire home?’

Her fiancé disappointed her even more.

At first, he looked furious, veins bulging, eyes red with rage.

"I’ll get justice for you," he promised. "No matter what it takes."

Days later, he returned bruised, scars covering his body, his shoulders slumped as if his soul had been drained.

He held Maria’s hands, trembling.

"I want to call off the engagement."

Maria froze.

"Why would you say that?" she demanded.

Tears filled his eyes as he finally confessed.

"She threatened me," he admitted.

"If I don’t become hers, she’ll kill you. She said she’d spare your life only if I chose her."

Maria erupted.

"Then I’ll meet her," she snapped. "I’ll record her confession and send her to jail."

On the surface, he agreed.

That meeting humiliated Maria in every possible way, but she endured it.

She got the recording. Exhausted and broken, she returned home and collapsed into bed.

The next morning, she went to the police station.

When she tried to submit the evidence, her phone was empty.

The files were gone.

Her vision blurred with rage.

’It was him,’ she realized instantly. ’He was the only one who knew my password.’

She called him.

No answer.

Instead, the call connected to the other woman.

A cold chuckle echoed through the speaker.

"If you know your place," the woman warned, "you’ll give up. Otherwise, I have a hundred ways to make you regret ever being born."

The call ended.

Ten minutes later, a message arrived from her fiancé.

"I’m deeply sorry for everything you’ve suffered," it read. "But I’ve decided not to ruin your life any further. I’m cutting off all ties with you. Please move on, forget the past, and find someone who can truly love you."

A voice message followed.

His voice cracked as he sang softly, painfully.

"You deserve someone better than me," he murmured. "Someone who won’t bring you danger... someone who won’t destroy you."

The final words hit like a blade.

"You should die."

Even as he said it, his voice was choked, trembling with suppressed emotion.

Maria stared at the screen, her hands shaking, the room closing in around her, the air thick and suffocating.

And for the first time, death no longer felt frightening... it felt peaceful.

Maria initially thought it was nothing more than a lover’s confession soaked in venom, carefully crafted to push her away while pretending to sound gentle.

Yet the longer she stared at the words, the more her hands trembled with suppressed fury.

The dim room smelled faintly of dust and cold air, and the silence felt suffocating.

’I should slap him,’ she thought bitterly.

How could he forget that the past he wanted her to forget involved her parents?

If it were merely heartbreak, she could have endured it. If her loss had been anything other than the death of her parents, she might still have been living a peaceful life.

Did he truly need to paint her as the unreasonable one?

’If you loved another woman,’ her thoughts raged, ’you could have chosen her openly.’