The Girl They Ignored Returned as the Woman Seven Men Would Die For novel Chapter 104

After Mika's death, Damaris wandered the streets of Juniper Springs like a ghost for a whole month.

At first, she wailed outside City Hall. After getting dragged to the police station, she wept there instead.

The incident had blown up entirely. Since Seraphina was already a semi-famous celebrity at the time, legions of paid internet trolls swarmed the news articles about Damaris's protests, flooding them with smears and abuse.

Yet Damaris refused to back down. Even though she barely knew how to use a smartphone, she taught herself how to create an account on social media.

She took to the internet to interrogate Mika's killer.

And she relentlessly demanded to know why Seraphina had cowered behind a locked door while Mika was being stabbed dozens of times.

When the trolls attacked, she fought back against every single one of them, fiercely defending her territory like a crazed mother hen.

In the original author's narrative, Damaris was written as a greedy villain just trying to extort Seraphina.

The story claimed she merely wanted to trade her daughter's cold corpse for cold hard cash.

But as her life had flashed before her eyes, Mika had clearly seen the truth.

During that grim period, Damaris wore the same two floral dresses until they were foul and threadbare.

She completely abandoned her usual heavy makeup, bearing a haggard, deeply lined face of an exhausted middle-aged woman for the world to see.

Her beautifully styled curls withered into a tangled, lifeless mess, giving way to stubborn streaks of gray she no longer cared to hide.

She had truly and profoundly lost her mind over Mika's death.

Later, with James Sterling acting as defense counsel, Damaris lost the lawsuit.

Bribed by one of the male leads, Caleb accepted a fifty-thousand-dollar payout to testify against Damaris, painting her as an indecent, money-grubbing woman who never actually cared about her daughter and was only trying to extort Seraphina.

The public outcry online swung entirely in Seraphina's favor.

Damaris was viciously doxxed. People threw filth at her door and mailed her slaughtered chickens, bloody razor blades, and funeral wreaths.

All because she wasn't a perfect victim.

Ultimately, in the dead of a forgotten night, she was dragged under an overpass by a nameless drifter and brutalized.

By the time she resurfaced in the public eye, she was just another bloated corpse floating in the North River.

The villain got her karma, and everyone cheered.

But no one cared to remember that this so-called money-hungry villain had also lost her one and only daughter.

A mother and daughter were born allies.

Any normal person with a conscience would feel guilty.

That was exactly why she had walked away so decisively, refusing to stay at the estate and let them explain themselves.

If everything was instantly smoothed over, there would be no reason for him to ever reach out again.

Meanwhile, across the city.

Lucas had long since driven home and was tossing and turning in bed.

The moment he heard the chime, he snatched his phone from under his pillow. Seeing Mika's icy reply, his heart sank.

He hesitated for a long time, unsure of how to even begin.

After wrestling with his thoughts, he furrowed his brows and tapped rapidly on the screen.

Mika picked up her phone and saw two new messages pop up.

[Transfer to you: $100,000.00]

[Lucas: I'm sorry.]