After Rebirth, I Outplayed My Manipulative Older Sister Chapter 05

After Rebirth, I Outplayed My Manipulative Older Sister Chapter 05

Mom said, “I don’t know what’s been going on with your dad lately. He’s been under so much. 

pressure. He started smoking again.” 

I glanced at Georgia. She walked into her room 

and closed the door softly, but her fingers lingered 

on the doorknob for a split second. 

She was hiding something from me. 

I pieced together what happened that day from the neighbors. 

That afternoon, Dad was about to leave on a business trip. He got a phone call right before he headed out, canceled the trip, and went back inside. 

A neighbor passing by downstairs heard Dad yelling on the balcony, loud enough to sound like. 

an argument. 

Then came the wail of an ambulance. 

“Who was he talking to?” 

The neighbor wasn’t sure. The only thing she 

caught clearly was, “This isn’t my call to make.” 

And then, “You can’t do this.” 

Dad never raised his voice like that with anyone. 

Unless it was the daughter he loved most. 

After Dad was discharged from the hospital, I took his cigarettes from his study while he was in good. spirits. “Dad, ease up on these.” 

He nodded and looked at me. He seemed to want 

to say something but held back. Finally, all he said 

was, “Cora, I see how much you care about this 

family.” 

I smiled and said nothing. 

I saw guilt in his eyes. 

What was he guilty about? 

On the way home, I stopped Elvis, Dad’s assistant. 

“Elvis, what really happened the day my dad was 

hospitalized?” 

His eyes flickered, unsure what to say. 

I handed him an envelope with three thousand 

dollars inside. 

He pushed it away, refusing to take it. 

He sighed, seeming to make up his mind. “It’s not 

that I wanted to keep it from you. Your father told 

me not to say anything.” 

“Say what?” 

“Your mother.” He paused. “She was diagnosed 

with a brain aneurysm a while back. It’s in al 

dangerous spot–surgery’s risky, but if she gets. 

upset, it could rupture at any time. Once it 

ruptures, there’s no saving her.” 

My fingers tightened sharply. “When did this 

happen?” 

“About two weeks before your father’s heart 

attack. Your mother didn’t want you to know, said 

you were in your senior year and couldn’t afford 

distractions.” 

“She’d been going through the company’s financial, records back then, and we thought it was just 

routine. Turns out she was sorting everything out, trying to secure your future.” 

“What future?” 

Elvis hesitated. “She found out your father 

transferred eight hundred thousand dollars from 

the company account to pay for Georgia’s 

overseas study program. That kind of sum counts 

as embezzlement in a formal audit.” 

“And then?” 

“She reported it to the authorities.” 

I froze. 

“Your mother’s thinking was simple,” Elvis said, his 

voice very soft. “The day she was diagnosed with 

the aneurysm, she told me, ‘If I suddenly go, no 

one in this family will be able to protect Cora. I 

need to secure what’s hers while I still can.” 

Wind blew from behind, flaring the hem of my 

school uniform. 

Mom had an aneurysm. 

The doctors told her not to get upset, not to be 

stressed. 

Yet she’d chosen the most reckless way to fight 

for me–digging up records, filing reports, blowing everything open. 

She hadn’t cared if her aneurysm would rupture. 

She’d only cared that if she died, Georgia wouldn’t 

take everything. 

“Then is my mom still…” 

My phone rang before I could finish. It was Dad. 

“Cora, get to the hospital now. Your mom… she just collapsed while talking to Georgia in the hospital room.” Dad’s voice shook. 

I knew that tremble well. I’d heard it once before, 

outside the ER. 

That time, it was the night my grandfather passed 

away.