Chapter 262 Dispute

Chapter 262 Dispute

Mia's right cheek was split open from the cheekbone all the way down to the jawline — a red slash of lightning cutting across that carefully maintained face.

Mia screamed. Her hand snapped open and the knife clattered away as she stumbled backward.

She pressed her hand over her face. Warm liquid seeped through her fingers, looking almost black under the harsh white lights.

The pain hit before her mind could catch up. It wasn't until she saw the blood pooling in her palm that the wound became real to her.

"My face — my face!" Mia crumpled to the floor, and for the first time, her voice held genuine terror.

Her face was her sharpest weapon.

In the entertainment industry, in front of men, in every situation where she needed to be treated well — that face had opened countless doors for her.

And now Lily had destroyed it.

Lily was gasping for breath, her hands covered in cuts. She pushed herself up against the side of the bed, still gripping the box cutter. Blood dripped from the blade, one drop at a time, blooming into tiny red flowers on the white sheets.

"You ruined everything I had..." Mia pressed her hand to her face, tears and blood running together through her fingers. She looked up at Lily, her eyes burning with a hatred so thick it almost felt solid. "You ruined me!"

Lily coughed, her voice scraped raw like sandpaper on wood. "Mia. Get it straight — who went after who here? And don't tell me you've forgotten what you've done to me all these years."

"Because you deserved it!" Mia shrieked, launching herself up from the floor and throwing herself at Lily again.

The two of them tangled together on the narrow hospital bed — Mia's nails digging into Lily's arms, Lily's elbow slamming into the bed rail, pain exploding through the bone.

By the time the nurses and security guards burst in, Mia was on top of Lily, both of their faces streaked with scratch marks.

The box cutter had been flung somewhere in the chaos.

"Let go! Let go!" Two security guards hauled Mia off. A nurse rushed to check Lily's pulse.

Mia was dragged into the hallway, still fighting.

"Miss, you need stitches. The cut is deep — if we don't treat it now, it's going to scar," a nurse said, trying to reach her.

"Scar?" Mia went still. Her eyes went wide, the pale hallway lights reflected in her pupils. "You're saying I'm going to scar?"

The nurse shifted back half a step under her stare.

Mia slowly raised her hand and touched the wound on her face.

The moment her fingertips made contact, she flinched like she'd been burned, her whole body shaking hard. Then she laughed — a sharp, high sound that bounced off the empty hallway walls, like a fingernail dragged across glass.

"Lily," she suddenly called out, loud, toward the hospital room. "Do you think you've won?"

Silence from inside.

Mia shook off the security guard's hand and straightened her blood-soaked collar with a kind of unhinged composure.

Then she leaned back against the wall and slowly slid down to the floor, knees pulled up to her chest, folding herself into something small.

Blood seeped through her fingers and wound across the white tiles in thin, wandering lines.

"You've never been better than me at anything. Not once." Mia's voice dropped low, like she was talking to herself, or to someone only she could see. "Not grades, not talent, not looks. Even your own dad liked me more. You remember? When we were little, he'd buy you dresses — always blue. He'd buy me red, because she said red suited me."

The hallway was quiet. Only the faint beeping of monitors drifted through from the surrounding rooms.

"You scored ninety-five and he hit you. I scored ninety-five and he said I was doing great. You stood in the doorway watching, eyes full of tears, but you wouldn't cry."

Mia tilted her head, a small smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. "You know what I hated most about you, Lily? That look on your face — hating me with everything you had, but acting like you didn't care. Like none of it touched you."

The hospital room door was slightly ajar. Lily's voice came through it, rough but steady. "So you took everything I had."

"Everything you had?" Mia tipped her head back and laughed like that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. The wound split wider. Blood ran fresh down her jawline and into her neck. "What exactly did you have? That part in the drama club where you couldn't even get your lines out? That guy who never would have looked twice at you if you hadn't made the first move? Or your dad — the one who never once looked at you like you mattered?"

She paused. Her voice softened — soft the way a blade is soft when it's wrapped in velvet.

"Lily, nobody took anything from you. Those things were never meant to be yours. You weren't good enough for them. You never were."

The room stayed quiet for a long time. Long enough that Mia wondered if Lily had passed out. Long enough for a nurse to go back in and check. Long enough for the fluorescent light above to start humming.

Then Lily spoke. "Mia, do you want to know why you've never gotten to me?"

Mia blinked.

"The year he first became your dad, you picked up that ceramic knife he bought you and said you wanted to cut me an apple. You held it up in front of my face and said, 'Look, isn't it pretty?' Then your hand slipped. The blade caught me right below my eye. Another centimeter and it would have gone in."

Lily's voice was steady and flat, like she was reading from an old medical report. "You ran to him crying and told him I'd grabbed the knife and cut myself. He believed you. He slapped me and said, 'Can't you let your little sister have anything?'"

Mia's lashes flickered.

"We both entered the youth writing competition. I won the gold award. You went through my bag, pulled out the draft I'd spent a month on, tore it up, and flushed it down the toilet. Then you went home with your third-place certificate and told him I'd been helping you revise your essay but got bored halfway through and quit, so you didn't have time to finish. He believed you again. He made me kneel for three hours and said, 'Can't you want good things for your sister?'"

"You knew I liked him, so you went and told him things about me — that I stole, that I cheated on exams, that I'd been written up by the school. And then you told everyone about us. You always thought I was disgusting."

Lily's voice carried through the door, and every word left Mia with nowhere to go.

"When we were older, I got into a modeling program. You cried to your parents for an entire night, saying you wanted to be in the same class as me. Kai pulled strings and paid to get you in. Same class as me. On the first day, in front of everyone, you called me 'big sister' and smiled and said, 'She's great at everything, just not so great with people — hope you'll all be patient with her.' For the next two months, not one person would be my friend. I had no one to talk to."

Lily's voice started to shake — not from fear, but from something that had been held down for too long and had finally found a way out.