Chapter 396
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Chapter 396:
She grabbed a cluster of microphones, her eyes shining with forced, theatrical tears, and held up a piece of paper.
“This is a leniency letter we submitted to the judge,” Elouise cried out to the cameras. “My daughter Jocelyn has always been deeply jealous of Victoria’s academic success. This is a malicious family dispute. Jocelyn is using her husband’s wealth to bully her own cousin. She needs psychiatric help — not a courtroom p>
The clip broadcast live. Within minutes, the footage ignited a fierce war on social media. While the vast majority of the public firmly supported Jocelyn, recognizing Elouise’s desperate theatricality for what it was, a coordinated faction of internet trolls — heavily funded by the last remnants of the Stein family’s PR budget — alongside bitter anti-wealth commentators began aggressively pushing a conspiracy theory. They flooded the comment sections, questioning whether Jocelyn was simply a bored, vindictive billionaire’s wife abusing the justice system to crush her poorer relatives.
Inside the Collins penthouse.
Dо𝘸n𝘭оa𝘥a𝗯l𝖾 𝖯𝗗𝗙ѕ 𝗈ո
Jocelyn stood in the center of the living room, staring at the massive television screen. She watched her biological mother assassinate her character on live television.
Her hands gripped the back of a leather armchair. Her knuckles were bone-white.
She did not cry. Her eyes were as dead and cold as ash.
Gaston walked out of his study. He took one look at the screen, grabbed the remote, and shut the television off.
He walked over to Jocelyn and dropped to one knee in front of her, taking her freezing hands in his massive, warm palms.
A dark, violent storm raged behind his eyes. “I will have my PR team wipe her existence from the internet in five minutes p>
Jocelyn squeezed his hands and shook her head. Her voice was raspy, but it held the strength of forged steel.
“No,” Jocelyn said. “I am ending this myself p>
She let go of his hands, walked to the kitchen island, opened her laptop, and logged directly into her personal X account, which had millions of followers.
She did not consult a publicist. She typed out a brutal, legally precise public statement, detailing the decades of emotional neglect, the financial exploitation, and the Stein family’s attempt to buy their way out of a felony with a five-million-dollar bribe.
Then she typed the final, crushing sentence in all caps:
FROM THIS MOMENT ON, I SEVER ALL BIOLOGICAL AND LEGAL TIES WITH ELOUISE STEIN.
She clicked the attachment button and uploaded the audio recording of Edward Stein’s phone call from the previous day — the call in which he admitted Victoria’s guilt and begged to pay her off.
She hit send.
The post detonated across the internet like a nuclear bomb.
The audio recording was undeniable. Elouise’s grieving mother narrative was instantly pulverized. The public backlash was immediate and vicious, the internet branding the Steins as parasitic opportunists.
On Wall Street, algorithmic trading bots picked up the viral sentiment. Within ten minutes, the few remaining stocks tied to the Stein family trust suffered a massive short-selling attack, plummeting until trading was halted.