Livestreaming the Low-Budget Life Chapter 10
So this was the love Ruby had been so desperate to protect from me? How ironic and absurd.
In the end, Mom and Dad sold her to a wealthy man in his 50s. I didn’t know the exact sum, but it had to be a
fortune.
They’d even decided to livestream the wedding, milking every last ounce of her worth.
On screen, Ruby looked every bit glamorous and wealthy, but her eyes were dead behind the sparkle. She loved money, sure, but that didn’t make her willing to marry a man older than Dad.
The greasy 50-year-old held her in his arms and kissed her roughly across the face. Just watching it made me sick.
And there were Mom and Dad, smiling cheerfully into the camera.
A shiver ran through me. They didn’t deserve to be parents. They had never loved Ruby and me. They were just using us to line their pockets.
I closed the live stream. I couldn’t stomach another second.
A couple of days later, my phone rang from an unknown number.
The moment I picked up, Ruby’s voice pierced through the line. “Aria! Are you happy now? This is all your fault!”
I couldn’t stop laughing and shot back, “Don’t pin this on me. I didn’t make you marry an old man. Isn’t life in a rich family supposed to be easy?”
But I knew her life was far from easy, judging by how completely she was unraveling.
“Why? Why?” she muttered. “Why can you live so freely abroad?”
“Why?” I answered calmly. “Because if Mom and Dad had raised you in poverty, you’d have ended up with the same tragic fate as me.”
Ruby’s walls came down in an instant, and she let out a raw scream.
She ground her teeth as she spat the words out. “Listen, stop laughing at me. Soon, Mom and Dad will come for you, and then they’ll marry you off to a 60-year-old man!”
I hung up with a sneer.
Whether they’d make it to Delvoria to drag me away was a different matter. I’d collected and organized every illegal thing they’d done on their live streams.
They’d failed as parents, and now they’d forced their underage daughter into marriage. They’d made money through the streams and laundered it on top of that.
I’d handed all the evidence to the police, and they’d get exactly what they deserved.
Coming to Delvoria for me? They probably wouldn’t even get out of jail.
The police arrested my parents, yet Ruby still couldn’t break free from that old man’s grip.
Hadn’t she always loved money and enjoyed life in a sprawling villa? Wasn’t this exactly the life she’d wanted all along?
Lately, I’d been meeting friends from all over the world.
Studying could be tiring, yet it always felt worth the effort. After class, I headed to the supermarket. Stepping out, the evening breeze swept over me, bringing a deep, soothing calm.
In the distance, the sun dipped low, casting the horizon in a golden light, as if the whole world itself were glowing.
Everything felt so beautiful and full of hope, just like my future.
