Chapter 17 — Reborn: This Hell Is Mine

Counter Gambit

Ý Vy and Bách Nguyên decided to take a risky step: letting the rumor that Ý Vy had a serious accident and was in critical condition at the hospital spread in a controlled manner among a small circle of people directly related to the incident — including Tuệ Nghi.

This is a sophisticated plan proposed by Ý Vy herself, inspired by the same trick of spreading fake news that she had successfully applied before. If Tuệ Nghi really has a remorseful conscience, this news will cause her to panic, possibly trying to contact her, confess, or at least reveal her true torment. If Tuệ Nghi was completely numb to her crime, her reaction to this news — a suspicious calmness, or worse, a tacit relief — would be the final psychological evidence, which, although not legally valid, would be enough for those closest to Ý Vy to no longer have any hesitation when faced with the truth about who Tuệ Nghi really is.

Bích Ngọc, the only person outside the family who was told part of the truth to coordinate, played the role of the first person to break the news to Tuệ Nghi through a tearful, skillfully staged call. "Hey Tuệ Nghi, Ý Vy... she had a car accident, she's in the hospital, her condition is not very good."

Through a secretly recorded phone call with the tacit consent of the parties involved in the plan, Tuệ Nghi's voice was silent for a terrifyingly long distance before bursting into tears, asking repeatedly about the hospital, about the specific condition, and saying that he would come immediately. That panic, although it may have stemmed from the consequences of her guilt being discovered, still carried a tone of real pain that made Bích Ngọc, who did not know the whole truth, confused as to why Ý Vy asked her to make such a cruel call to someone who clearly loved her sister so much.

Tuệ Nghi drove like crazy to the named hospital, but when she arrived, she couldn't find Ý Vy's name on the patient list. She stood dumbfounded in the hospital hallway and called Bích Ngọc in panic, only to receive an answer that perhaps there had been a mistake in information.

Standing behind a corner of the hallway, Ý Vy, completely healthy, observed all of her sister's reactions through a safe distance, as arranged by Mr. Son. She clearly saw, on Tuệ Nghi's face at that moment, not the relief of someone who had just achieved her goal, but a real panic and extreme pain - an emotion that could not be faked in such a sudden moment.

Ý Vy stood still, a complicated feeling rising in her heart. She understood that even though Tuệ Nghi had embarked on a path of crime, her sisterly love still truly existed in a certain corner of her sister's heart - which was both a fragile glimmer of hope and a greater pain when realizing that the person who could truly suffer because she was in trouble was the same person who harmed her.

Meanwhile, another development, beyond the original plan, begins to threaten to ruin Ý Vy and Bách Nguyên's entire strategy of waiting for the big party.

The mechanic who was hired to sabotage the car, after hearing that the incident had been discovered and that the police were likely keeping an eye on him, was so frightened that he tried to contact Tuệ Nghi directly through a spam phone number, demanding more money to keep quiet, threatening to reveal the whole truth if he did not respond. Mr. Son, thanks to having pre-installed a number of monitoring measures on phone numbers related to the incident, promptly grasped this information before it went out of control.

"We need to act immediately with this mechanic," Mr. Son urgently reported to Ý Vy and Bách Nguyên. "If we let him freely communicate and threaten each other, there's a risk that the whole incident will unravel in a way we can't control, before we can fully prepare to confront him at the big party."

Bách Nguyên, with the support of his own team of lawyers, decided to discreetly coordinate with a trusted police investigation officer with whom the Chung family had a long-standing relationship, to quietly control and interrogate the mechanic before he could make further contact with anyone else. During the closed interrogation, the mechanic, frightened by the risk of facing charges of intentional murder, revealed the whole truth, confirming that it was Tuệ Nghi who directly provided the schedule and wages through an intermediary, and affirmed that he received instructions on the level of "must be assured" from another higher-ranking person whom he only knew through the phone's voice and had never met in person — an indirect but important clue, strongly suggesting a direct involvement. by Vệ Đắc Thịnh.

This testimony, even though it was a heavy blow to the conspiracy of Tuệ Nghi and Đắc Thịnh, also put Ý Vy and Bách Nguyên in a situation where they had to carefully consider: keeping the testimony secret until the big party to achieve maximum exposure effect, or disclosing it immediately to ensure legal safety, avoiding the risk of the mechanic changing his testimony or being murdered by the people who hired him.

"We will keep this testimony confidential for a little longer, but we must put the mechanic into witness protection immediately," Bách Nguyên decided, after consulting with a lawyer. "At the same time, more preparation is needed to ensure that when the party takes place, we have everything necessary — witness statements, financial evidence, and if possible, a direct confession from Tuệ Nghi herself in front of everyone." Ý Vy nodded in agreement, although she couldn't help but worry about the remaining waiting time. She understood that Tuệ Nghi's plot was now on the brink of collapse, much earlier than her and Đắc Thịnh's original plan. For a cold, calculating mastermind like Đắc Thịnh, when realizing that a chess piece is at risk of becoming a burden, the next reaction will often not be to protect, but to eliminate it before it can cause harm.

And just like Ý Vy's prediction, just a few days later, a new development began to emerge - a development that showed that Tuệ Nghi, who once thought she was in control of part of the game, was about to become the next victim in the very game she had voluntarily entered.

After a night of standing dumbfounded in the hospital hallway, Tuệ Nghi returned to her apartment in a state of complete collapse. She did not dare to call Ý Vy again to ask for clarification, nor did she dare to contact the mechanic who was constantly texting her threats, fearing that every move could be a trap. She sat crouched in the corner of the living room all night, hugging her pillow, letting her inner struggles torment her to the point of exhaustion.

The next morning, when she learned that Ý Vy was completely healthy and that no accident had occurred, a feeling of both relief and extreme confusion came to Tuệ Nghi. Relieved that her sister was safe — that feeling welled up so strongly that she had to wonder if the part of her who once loved Ý Vy still existed in her more than she thought. But she was confused, because she didn't understand why rumors of an accident had spread to her ears at such a sensitive time, and her intuition told her that this was not a random mistake.

She tried to contact Đắc Thịnh's assistant to ask about the mechanic's situation, but only received unusually long silence, completely different from her previous enthusiastic and proactive attitude. Late in the evening, a short, cold message finally arrived from Đắc Thịnh himself: "Keep contact to a minimum from now on. Don't proactively call anyone from my place anymore. Wait for instructions."

Tuệ Nghi looked at that message, and a cold feeling spread throughout her body. She understood that in the world of people like Đắc Thịnh, a chess piece that began to pose a risk would quickly be seen as a burden to eliminate, not a partner to protect. She realized too late that, from the beginning, she had never truly been an equal participant in this agreement, but merely a tool that could be discarded whenever it was no longer useful.

That night, Tuệ Nghi could not sleep. She sat in front of the bathroom mirror for a long time, looking at her own face reflected under the cold white light. She no longer recognized the woman in the mirror—not the dutiful younger sister everyone saw, nor the cold mastermind she had once told herself she had to become to survive. There was only emptiness left, and fear spread from her heart to her fingertips when she realized that the path she had chosen offered no way back; she could only keep moving forward, even though the abyss ahead seemed bottomless.