The Ungrateful Sister-in-law

When we got home, we found a crowd of people blocking the doorway.

As soon as they saw Tiara, they surrounded her.

"Tiara, I trusted you as a friend, and that's why I gave you my money. How could you cheat me?"

"Exactly! We've been friends for years, and you still swindled my money!"

"I even invested all of our savings behind my wife's back! You told me it was a guaranteed profit! What are we supposed to do now?"

...

Everyone was shouting at once, and Tiara hadn't even figured out what was going on.

Then someone else stepped forward. "We went to that company today, but the janitor told us they moved out a few days ago. There's no company there now."

"What? You're just making stuff up! That company belongs to a close friend of mine. There's no way I wouldn't know if something happened."

Tiara pulled out her phone and called Ansley, but no one answered after a long time.

She kept calling, but still, no one picked up.

Finally, she heard the message saying the phone was turned off.

Tiara's face turned pale instantly, but she still wasn't willing to give up.

She took a taxi to the company's location, only to find it was empty.

When she returned home, utterly defeated, the whole family had already heard about what happened.

"I told you Ansley wasn't trustworthy! Now look what happened! All the money is gone. She's nothing but a con artist!"

"How could this be? She said she'd help me make money!"

"What! Help you make money? She was after your money the whole time."

Marcus sneered from the side.

His words seemed to snap her out of it.

"What good does it do to say that now?

"This is all your fault! When I asked you if doing business with Ansley was a good idea, you said it was!"

Tiara turned her gaze toward me.

She was trying to shift the blame onto me.

"Tiara, I never encouraged you to do business with that woman. All I said was, 'It's up to you!' I thought you were an adult who could make your own decisions. Anyway, wasn't it because you didn't know how to judge people? This has nothing to do with me.

"Besides, weren't you the one who said you were good friends? Who could've guessed it?" I said innocently.

2.2 Conflict Over the Scam