Framed, Then Reborn To Rule With The Harem System.

Gone.

Chapter 3

Carson’s POV

I don’t know how, but a week had passed in almost complete silence.

Every morning I came downstairs for breakfast because staying in my room without eating made my father worry more. My stepmother never missed the chance to speak.

“Try not to sit too close to Lilian,” she said one morning while pouring coffee. “We wouldn’t want any more accusations.”

Another day she looked at my plate and said, “I suppose even people like you still deserve to eat.”

Lilian barely looked at me. My father tried to keep the conversation normal, asking about sleep or if I needed anything from the store, but the air in the house stayed heavy. After each meal I went straight back upstairs and locked my door. I stopped going out for lunch. I stopped answering messages. The investigation was still open and the lawyers had told me to stay quiet and wait even though waiting felt like drowning slowly.

The system screen appeared a few more times during those days. Always the same blue panel floating in the air, asking if I accepted. I ignored it every time. I told myself stress could make a person see things. I told myself it would stop once the case was resolved.

On the seventh night I couldn’t sleep. Hunger finally pushed me out of my room. The house was dark and quiet and I moved down the stairs carefully, heading toward the kitchen for anything quick. As I passed the hallway near my father’s study, I heard a voice speak.

The door was slightly open and light spilled out of it. My stepmother’s voice came through clearly.

“Tell me it’s handled, Cara.”

Cara? Why was she speaking to her? I thought as I tried moving closer to the door to listen.

“It’s not,” I heard the familiar voice crackle through the speaker. “The police pulled the CCTV and the timestamps don’t match what I told them. The lawyers are asking questions already.”

“You had one job.” My stepmother sighed and pressed two fingers to her neck. “If you’d done it right, I wouldn’t be sitting here doing this at midnight. He was supposed to go to jail and disappear from our lives.”

My legs went numb.

“Do you understand what’s at stake?” she went on, her voice flat and cold, nothing like the one she used at breakfast. “As long as he’s still here, Richard’s company goes to whoever he trusts, and lately he’s been looking at that boy like he’s the son he should’ve had. Lilian’s place in this family is not something I’m willing to lose that bastard.”

“So what now?” Cara asked.

“Dominic is on his way to collect the drive. After that, if the case keeps falling apart, I’ll deal with him myself. One way or another he’s not staying in this house.”

My whole body shook. The case, the cell, the way my father had looked at me across the visiting table, all of it had been planned by her. Every night I had lain awake wondering what I’d done wrong, and she had been down the hall, sleeping fine.

I stepped back, and my sleeve caught the door handle. It slammed shut.

Fuck.

“Who’s there?” I heard her call out, then the sound of her following. I pushed through the front door and ran into the night. The driveway stretched ahead, dark. I kept running, not caring whether she was after me or not. Just as I was about to turn a corner, headlights filled my vision and the next thing I felt was something extremely hard slamming into me. The world spun as pain exploded through my side and head. I hit the ground and tried to breathe but my ears rang so loudly I could barely hear anything else.

The next thing I heard was Lilian’s voice, panicking.

“Mom, we have to take him to the hospital! He’s still breathing!”

My stepmother’s reply came calm and cold.

“No. Drag him to the side. Away from the lights.”

Both of them grabbed my arms and legs. The rough ground scraped against my back as they pulled me off the driveway and into the bushes near the roadside. I tried to speak but I couldn’t. Blood filled my mouth.

Lilian was crying. “But…we can’t just leave him here.”

“We can and we will,” my stepmother said. “This is the cleanest way. By morning it will look like a hit and run. No one will look too closely at an orphan who was already in legal trouble.”

I forced my eyes open. Their faces swam above me. I gathered what little air I had left.

“Y-you won’t get away –this.”

The words came out broken, but I know she heard them.

My vision narrowed as the pain started to fade away.

So this was how it ended. I was framed for something I never did. Abandoned by the people who were supposed to be my family. And now, I’m on the side of the road like I never mattered. I never cleared my name. I never got to make my father fully believe me. I never got to live for myself, even once. I never knew what it felt like to be wanted by someone who actually chose me. I was going to die without ever experiencing any of it.

I waited for the darkness everyone always talked about. I expected the world to fade into black.

Instead, light began to grow.

It started small, like a single point in the center of my vision, then spread outwardly. It was brighter than anything I’d ever seen before. Maybe this was heaven.

I tried to hold onto the moment, onto the anger, onto the promise I had just made.

The light kept expanding until it was all I could see.