Chapter 2: Family Ties and Fatal Mistakes

A guy in a headscarf, the richest country in the world—Dubai sounds like a fairy tale to some people. But lately, it’s been all over the news: people lured there and waking up minus a kidney.

Even though my stepsister, with my stepmother’s backing, bullied me every day and never took me seriously, I still tried to protect her. Family is family, right?

Back then, she slapped me hard across the face, calling me jealous and selfish—like I didn’t want her to have a good life. I took it and kept warning her: if something happened, it’d be too late for regrets. Even my stepmother and dad would be devastated.

To stop her, I burned through months of savings, found real scam victims to talk to her, and basically became her shadow day and night. She hated me for it—screamed, hit, even tried to sneak out. But because I never let her out of my sight, disaster was avoided.

After hearing about more and more real cases, she finally started to doubt herself. She deleted the Dubai prince’s contact. I was so relieved.

To reward her, I set her up with a tall, decent guy from the county clerk’s office, paid for her wedding, bought her a car, and handed her some cash.

But after the wedding, when her husband couldn’t buy her a $10,000 designer bag, she turned on me.

“It’s all your fault! If it weren’t for you, I’d be a princess by now.”

Eventually, she hated me with every fiber of her being. On Memorial Day weekend, our whole family went for a picnic. She pushed me down a mountain.

I hit the rocks hard. For a heartbeat, the world spun red—then nothing.

My father and stepmother just stood there, cold as stone, watching it all happen. They blamed me for ruining her chance at luxury. They took everything I had and ran off to Dubai with her, spending money like it was nothing.

The family I treated with kindness, patience, and loyalty treated me like I was just another piece of furniture—useful, silent, invisible.

If that’s what I meant to them, then fine. Go live your fantasy. But this time, you’re not taking me with you.

Even as the world kept spinning—Instagram reels, wedding hashtags, Memorial Day flags—I was just another small-town tragedy swept under the rug. No one ever found out what really happened.