Bitch Neighbor Framed My Son, I Sent Her to Prison After Rebirth

The first day we moved into our new place, the girl next door, who lived alone, came over with red-rimmed eyes and begged my son to fix the broken water heater in her room. In my previous life, I felt sorry for her, so young and already without parents, so I sent my son over to help. That night her room caught fire. She stumbled out and sobbed to everyone who'd listen. "Her son tried to rape me, and when he couldn't, he set the fire to burn me alive and silence me!" The day the verdict came down, my son's bright future as a pilot was destroyed in an instant, and he became a murderer the whole internet spat on. In prison, my son couldn't take the torture and the bullying, and he ended his own life by throwing himself against a wall. To pay off the debts, I worked three jobs, until one night a heart attack dropped me dead on the street. She, meanwhile, played the fire survivor and launched a crowdfunding campaign, raised three hundred thousand dollars, and paid cash for an apartment downtown. Now, living this life all over again, the girl stood there with red eyes, her voice small and timid. "Ma'am, I'm scared of electricity. Could your son help me out?" I pulled my son back inside, my face blank. "There's a repair number on the wall. The service call is twenty-five dollars." Chapter 1 Tiffany froze where she stood. Her eyes went red in an instant, tears dropping one after another, the perfect picture of misery. The movers hauling boxes through the hallway stopped what they were doing. A middle-aged woman from down the hall, a thick gold chain around her neck, sidled over and started scolding me, her finger pointed in my face. "Good lord, how can you be this cold-blooded!" She bellowed it out, as if terrified someone might not hear. "This poor girl's out here renting a place all on her own, it's not easy, and all she wants is for your son to lend a hand. It costs him nothing. What is wrong with you!" Tiffany took the cue and buried her face in her hands, her shoulders trembling. "Ma'am, please don't blame her. It's all my fault." "I lost my mom and dad when I was little. I just paid six months' rent today, and I don't even have twenty-five dollars left for a repair. Otherwise, why would I ever beg like this..." The moment she started crying, more and more neighbors gathered around. A few young guys in tank tops wandered over, sizing up my son Ryan, then turning their contemptuous stares on me. "Yeah, seriously, your son's built like that and doesn't have an ounce of a man's decency or backbone." "Too scared to even fix a water heater. What kind of man is that? Like he'll ever amount to anything." Ryan got worked up and opened his mouth to fire back. I squeezed his wrist hard and pulled him behind me. I swallowed down the bottomless hatred over my son's terrible death in my previous life, fixed my eyes on the woman, and let out a cold laugh. "You're so warmhearted, so why are you standing here making snide little comments?" "Twenty-five dollars is only a meal to you. If you feel so sorry for her, then you can cover the twenty-five dollars yourself." The woman's voice caught in her throat. Her face flushed red, and she stammered for a long moment. "I... I'm nothing to her, why should I pay her bill! You're completely unreasonable!" I couldn't be bothered with her. I turned and pointed at the young guys who'd been running their mouths. "Aren't you the ones with backbone? Aren't you real men?" "Go on in and fix her water heater right now. It's shorting out, so make sure you grab the live wires to check whether it's fixed." Shut down, the young men shrank back, ducking their heads. "We're not professionals. If we break it, who's paying for that?" "Right, right, I've got soup on the stove, and I don't know a thing about repairs. I'm heading back." In the blink of an eye, every one of the would-be heroes had slipped back into their apartments, and even the woman went inside, still muttering curses. Only Tiffany was left in the hallway. Seeing that no one was speaking up for her anymore, Tiffany glared at me, grinding her teeth. She forgot to even keep up the crying act, and her voice turned sour and mocking. "If you look down on poor people, just say so. Don't stand here humiliating me on purpose!" I wasn't about to indulge her. I just grabbed Ryan and pulled him back inside. Back inside, Ryan looked completely confused. "Mom, it wouldn't have been a big deal to help her out. She does seem pretty pitiful." I looked Ryan dead in the eye, my voice more serious than he'd ever heard. "Listen to me carefully. From now on you are never to have any contact with that girl next door in private. Not one single word!" "Don't ask why. Do you hear me!" My expression frightened Ryan, and though he was still puzzled, he nodded without arguing. He turned and went into his room. I sat on the couch, cold sweat soaking my back, my eyes fixed on the front door. Eleven o'clock at night. A piercing fire alarm suddenly went off outside the door. Then thick smoke came rolling down the hallway, the sharp stench of burning seeping in through the crack under the door. Chapter 2 My heart plunged. The thing I dreaded most had happened after all. I kicked open Ryan's door and pressed the wet towel I'd prepared earlier over his nose and mouth. "Forget your stuff, get downstairs, now!" I dragged Ryan through the smoke-filled stairwell and rushed all the way down to the open ground below. Plenty of people from the complex had run down too, huddled together and coughing. In the middle of the clearing, Tiffany lay slumped on the ground, her clothes in disarray. Her face was smeared with black soot, and a large piece of her shirt at the shoulder had been torn away, exposing a bra strap underneath. Ryan had barely found his footing, hadn't even caught his breath. The second Tiffany saw Ryan, she screamed like a madwoman and scrambled backward, crawling and stumbling until she'd wedged herself into a corner. She stuck out a trembling finger, pointed it at Ryan's face, and shrieked. "Murderer! Help, somebody, the murderer's right here!" The neighbors around her were stunned, sucking in sharp breaths. Tiffany wailed as if her heart were being torn out, pounding the ground as she accused him. "It was him! Past ten at night he knocked on my door, said his mom had stopped him earlier, so he'd snuck over now to fix my water heater." "I was nice enough to let him in and pour him some water, and the second he was inside he locked the door behind him, threw me down on the bed, and tried to do that to me!" Tiffany was crying and shouting all at once, clutching her torn collar in a death grip. "I fought for my life, clawed his hand open, kicked him in the stomach, and that's the only reason he didn't succeed." "He was humiliated and furious, and scared I'd call the police, so he grabbed a lighter and set the curtains by my bed on fire. He wanted to burn me alive in there to keep me quiet!" The crowd erupted. The woman with the gold chain from earlier jumped right out and cursed Ryan to his face, her finger jabbing in his face. "I knew there was something off about your family this morning, so cold-blooded. Turns out this little punk was up to no good all along!" "Playing the good boy, huh, when you go assault a young girl in the middle of the night and set a fire on top of it. You're an animal!" "Call the police! Somebody call the police and get this animal locked up!" Ryan's face went white in an instant. He looked at the furious neighbors and shouted in shock. "I didn't! I was home all night, I never set one foot out the door. Why are you lying about me like this!" The building's security guards and several officers who'd rushed over at the news pushed quickly through the crowd and closed in around Ryan. Ryan's legs buckled and he nearly dropped to his knees, but I caught his arm and hauled him upright. Tiffany curled herself into a ball, shivering, and hid behind a female officer. She deliberately tugged her shirt down to reveal several glaring, blood-red scratches across her shoulder. "Officer, you have to help me, please, I almost died tonight!" My face cold, I held tight to Ryan's trembling hand. I looked past the officers and locked my eyes on Tiffany. "You'd better watch what you say, Tiffany. Words like that have consequences." "Making up lies out of thin air to frame someone for a serious crime. Do you have any idea how many years that gets you?" Tiffany's crying cut off, and she shouted through gritted teeth. "Don't you try to scare me! You're covering for your son. Your whole family's a bunch of murderers!" An officer cut off our argument. "That's enough, both of you. Talk proves nothing. Are there security cameras in the hallways?" The property manager came hurrying over, wiping the sweat off his forehead. "Yes! The hallway camera catches the door to her unit perfectly. I'll pull the footage right now!" Chapter 3 The footage showed ten-thirty at night. A man in a white T-shirt, wearing a black baseball cap and a black face mask, moved furtively through the hallway. He glanced left and right, then pushed the door open and slipped into Tiffany's apartment. And the design printed on that T-shirt was exactly the same as the one Ryan was wearing right now. Then the footage jumped ahead to ten forty-five. Thick smoke was pouring out through the gap in Tiffany's door, and the man in the cap burst out in a panic and ran off down the stairs. The man's build, his height, the way he walked, all of it looked exactly like Ryan. The moment this false evidence appeared, the whole crowd went into an uproar. "The proof's ironclad! It's this kid, no question!" "Wearing the exact same clothes and you still dare say it wasn't you!" The neighbors whipped out their phones, switched on their flashes, and snapped away at Ryan like mad, curses thundering all around. Seeing this, Tiffany pulled out her own phone and started a livestream right there on the spot. She wept prettily into the camera. "I'm just a girl living on my own, and my next-door neighbor, a trainee pilot, broke into my place in the middle of the night and tried to violently assault me." "When he couldn't, he set the place on fire, and I nearly burned to death. The cameras caught all of it, and now his mother is threatening me." The stream's title instantly drew tens of thousands of viewers, and the comments scrolled past in a dense flood, all of it online abuse. "Since when do scumbags get to be pilots? Lock him up already!" "A guy like this needs his pilot's license revoked. Never let him fly!" "Yeah, we can't let a monster like that escape the law!" Ryan looked at the comments and the faces around him and clawed at his own hair in despair. Eyes rimmed red, he shouted at the crowd in a hoarse voice. "That person in the video isn't me at all! I swear I didn't do it!" The words had barely left his mouth when a figure suddenly pushed out of the crowd. It was my husband, Gerald. He rushed up and, without a word, slapped Ryan hard across the face. The slap cracked out, snapping Ryan's head to the side, a thread of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "You animal! You've humiliated me completely!" Gerald cursed viciously and kicked the back of Ryan's knee, forcing him down to kneel in front of Tiffany. "Get down and beg her forgiveness right now! You want everyone at my company laughing at me!" Gerald cared more about his image than anything, and he was terrified that this thing trending online would ruin the deal he'd just closed. Looking at Ryan kneeling on the ground, Tiffany's lips curled into a quick, smug little smile. She made a show of wiping her tears and, feigning generosity, spoke into the camera. "Mr. Barrett, I'm a decent person, I really don't want to drag this out and make it ugly." "As long as he pays me three hundred thousand dollars in emotional damages and medical bills, and gives up his spot as a trainee pilot tomorrow." "Agree to those few conditions and I'll sign the settlement right away, go to the station to drop the charges, and keep him out of prison." Then she looked at the phone screen with fake sincerity. "Everyone watching, I want to give him a chance to turn his life around too." The instant Gerald heard he could settle quietly and save face, he nodded again and again. He turned and clamped down hard on my arm. "Vivian, are you deaf! Go home and get the deed so we can take out a loan against the house!" "Get three hundred thousand dollars together and pay her off to make this go away, and tomorrow take this little animal to your parents' place. Don't drag me down with you!" I looked at Gerald's disgusting face and yanked my arm out of his grip. Then I whipped my hand back and slapped him hard across the face. The blow sent Gerald staggering. I pointed right in his face and let him have it. "Gerald, do you even deserve to be called a father! You'd rather believe some lousy security tape and this woman's lies than your own son?" "Ask you to put up the money and you play dead, but ask me to sell the house and suddenly you're more eager than anyone. Get out of my sight!" The crowd around us flared up again. The gold-chain woman led the shouting. "This woman's insane! Absolutely shameless, the evidence is right there and she's still covering for a criminal. What a vicious mother!" "Call the cops and haul her in too, for obstruction!" Chapter 4 Tiffany pressed her advantage, walking right up beside the police car. She sobbed her heart out in front of the livestream camera. "Since you're all bullying me like this, and I'm just one orphaned girl who can't fight all of you, then if I don't get justice today, I'll smash my head against this police car and die, to prove I'm telling the truth!" As she said it, she lunged as if to slam her head into the car door, and two young men rushed to hold her back. The officer in charge's face darkened, and he pulled a cold pair of handcuffs from his belt. "Enough. Stop this." The officer walked toward Ryan with the handcuffs. "The witnesses, the evidence, the footage all point to you. You're a suspect in attempted rape and arson, so we have to bring you in for questioning. Let's go!" The moment Ryan saw the handcuffs, all the strength left his body and he crumpled to the ground. He looked at me in despair, the light in his eyes going out completely, as if he could already see the rest of his life ruined. I took a deep breath, threw my arms wide, and planted myself firmly in front of the officer. "Officer, I'm not obstructing your investigation, but I have to point out the flaw in that security footage you're holding!" The whole scene fell silent, everyone watching to see what trick I was about to pull. I turned and stared coldly at Tiffany. "Tiffany, you said you fought for your life, that you clawed his hand and kicked him in the stomach, right?" Tiffany stuck her chin out. "That's right! I've still got his skin under my nails!" I pointed at the screenshot of the footage on the tablet. "Then explain to everyone why, when the man in this footage runs out, his white T-shirt is spotless, without a single sign of being grabbed or torn?" Tiffany's expression shifted slightly. Her eyes flickered, and she scrambled for an excuse. "I was too scared, and the room was dark, I didn't kick his clothes right. I only managed to grab his arm and scratch it open!" That was exactly the line I'd been waiting for. I let out a cold laugh, walked over, firmly took both of Ryan's hands, and pushed his sleeves all the way up to his shoulders. "Everyone, open your eyes and look carefully!" I held them up for everyone to see, the livestream camera included. Ryan's arms were smooth and clean, not even a faint white line from a fingernail, let alone any scratch that had drawn blood. The voices around us dropped at once, and a few neighbors filming on their phones exchanged glances. "There's... there's not a single mark on his arms." Tiffany's eyes filled with panic, cold sweat beading on her forehead. She forced herself to keep shouting. "Then maybe I scratched his back! Either way the footage is ironclad proof, he looks exactly like that, and the clothes are the same too!" Just as the officer hesitated over whether to take Ryan in first, I turned and pulled a metal USB drive from my pocket. Staring straight at Tiffany's ashen face, I handed the drive to the officer and announced it one word at a time. "Too bad for you. On our first day here, I was worried about break-ins." "So I'd already installed a tiny camera inside the peephole of our front door."