Not A Small-Town Girl

"I’ve got a video I fixed up for you to watch."

Danielle pulled out her phone and projected the footage she had managed to recover earlier that day.

Outside the study, Audrey was pressing her ear to the door, trying to catch every word. But the thick walls made it impossible to hear anything.

She thought, ’What secret is Danielle about to reveal? Why does she need to bring Mom and Dad and Joseph into the study to talk about it privately?

’Is she talking behind my back? Badmouthing me? Of course, that made sense-Danielle is from a small village, so it isn’t surprising that she is so petty.’

Inside the study, the three of them watched the video in shocked silence. Joseph’s face darkened, his anger practically radiating from him as if he wanted to rip everything apart.

a master manipulator. She’d even tried to emotionally blackmail him at the office that day, pressuring him into marriage. All along, she’d been lying to him. If it weren’t for Danielle finding and restoring this video, he might have ended up

all the guilt he’d carried for years- feeling pressured by Sienna’s constant moral

same time, a weight lifted off his

of the small figure in the

Joseph had suddenly been with Sienna, but now everything was starting to fall into

this woman?" Joseph’s voice cut through

trace. That same year, Robert brought home a new woman- Emily, Sienna’s biological mother-and a girl about Ruby’s age. Emily became Ruby’s stepmother, and she treated

up working as a waitress at a hotel. Then,

Dixon family. Her life was so tragic. Her mother was from a good family, but when she