Chapter 7 Framed

"It has to be her! There's nobody else who could've done it! She's the only one new in this household!"

Eyes wide and agitated, Vivian couldn't maintain her composure and started to shout anxiously.

She pointed at the door, yelling at Maria to come back.

But the entire villa was soundproofed from the outside. Maria didn't hear a peep and simply continued practicing karate out in the yard.

"Hmm... She doesn't look guilty." Julie narrowed her eyes and watched Maria's movements from the window. "She looks so relaxed for someone who's supposedly committed a crime. Perhaps we're being too hasty in accusing her of being the thief."

Bill also looked out the window intently. After a while, he nodded in agreement. "Vivian, your mother's right. If Maria was guilty, I don't think she'd have stayed behind. She would've run away as soon as she got the chance."

Vivian, on the other hand, was unconvinced. She hissed through gritted teeth, "That just means this isn't the first time she's done this. She could just be acting, right? Isn't that even scarier? Clearly, she doesn't feel guilty at all!"

Vivian's words made sense to her father. Bill cleared his throat and announced, "Well, I won't rest until we get to the bottom of this. I won't tolerate such behavior in this household!"

Eventually, they asked Lily to call Maria inside.

Soon, Maria trotted into the living room, still sweating profusely from her workout. Her wet hair was plastered to her face, but she didn't look embarrassed in the slightest. In fact, the disheveled look added to her charm.

"Maria, there's something we need to ask you—"

The moment Maria arrived, Bill started talking in a low voice, his expression serious.

However, in the middle of his sentence, his eyes landed on the conspicuous pendant around Maria's neck.

Resting delicately on her collarbone was a jade pendant, skillfully tied around her neck with a black thread. Moreover, the jade pendant looked exactly like the one that Vivian had just lost.

"Jadee!" Vivian shrieked as soon as she saw the jade pendant around Maria's neck.

She was so angry that she couldn't stop herself from bellowing in anger.

"You thief! Not only did you steal Jadee, but you had the audacity to wear it as though it was yours all along!"

"What did I do now? Who're you calling a thief?"

Maria's brows furrowed slightly, but she didn't flinch in the face of Vivian's outright accusations.

"You, duh!" Pointing a finger at Maria's neck, Vivian flew into a fit of rage. "You know exactly what you did! You stole Jadee!"

Still confused, Maria looked in the direction Vivian was pointing and found that she was referring to her pendant.

"You mean this?"

As though she couldn't care less about the situation, Maria took off the necklace and casually tossed it to Bill.

Bill was startled.

Fortunately, his reflexes kicked in and his hands shot out in time to catch the jade pendant. Vivian and Julie also huddled around him to take a closer look at the Jadee lookalike.

But among everyone in the room, Lily was the most surprised.

She was lucky since the whole Jenkins family had technically caught Maria red-handed. But that wasn't the point.

How on earth did Maria get her hands on a jade piece that looked exactly like Vivian's?

Jadee was supposed to be the work of an extremely famous master. There was no way that a country bumpkin like Maria could possess something like that.

Bill, however, firmly believed that the jade piece Maria had tossed to him was Jadee.

"Maria, explain yourself. Why do you have this?" Bill asked straightforwardly, rubbing his aching temples.