My Birthday, My Downfall novel Chapter 18

By the time I arrived at the hospital, Mom had been transferred out of the emergency room, but her condition was still critical.

"I'm sorry!" I choked as I looked at Dad.

He hugged me tightly. "It's okay!"

"Mom is most afraid of you getting hurt. If it happened again, she’d still step in front of you."

He comforted me, gently patting my back.

The tension in my mind, which had been tightly wound, finally snapped. I couldn’t help but cry out, my sobs racking my body.

If I had just walked away when I saw Xena, they would never have had the chance to kidnap me. Mom wouldn’t have gotten hurt, and now I was consumed with guilt.

I cried until I nearly fainted, finally managing to calm down after a long while.

My foster parents came to the hospital, hoping to plead for Chad.

"Please! Help us talk to the police and get Chad released!" My foster mother knelt before Dad, crying.

"We only have one son! We can’t afford for anything to happen to him!"

"It was all Xena’s fault! Chad is a good kid, he wouldn’t have done anything bad!" she sobbed.

I looked at them coldly, their performance failing to surprise me. I had long since given up on Xena.

The Smith family’s preference for sons over daughters was something I knew all too well. Even if we hadn’t swapped lives, Xena's life with the Smith family wouldn’t have been better than mine as a foster child.

She probably started doing all the housework early on, eating the worst food, while the good things went to the men. She had to quit school in middle school and start working, saving money for her brother.

This was the typical life trajectory of many girls in Smith family village, different faces but the same fate.

I looked at my foster mother coldly. "We’re not only going to hold him accountable!"

"We’re going to hold you accountable for trafficking children!"

She stared at me in shock, trembling with rage. "How can you say that?!"

"Don’t you remember how good your brother was to you? How could you be so heartless!"

More and more people gathered around, and she collapsed onto the ground, throwing a tantrum.

"Look! How heartless can someone be?!"

"I raised you, and now you want to sue your own brother?"