Manager Lambert and the others wore expressions of barely concealed anguish, but with the bodyguards standing right there, none of them dared to move.
All they could do was bury their heads a little lower.
I lay sprawled on the floor, trembling from head to toe.
My dignity had been ground into the mud beneath their feet.
But I couldn't let my grandmother die. She was the only family I had left in this world.
In the depths of my despair, I lifted my bloodshot eyes and fixed them on Beverly, who stood off to the side, utterly unmoved.
"Ms. Delgado." My voice shook so badly it barely sounded like my own. "You can fire me. You can dock my pay."
"But when you went bankrupt and tried to jump off that building, I was the one who pulled you back."
"You knelt before the Patron Saint and swore a sacred oath that you would care for my grandmother like your own. You can't do this!"
At the words "sacred oath," the corner of Beverly's eye twitched.
But instead of stopping Dean, she took a disgusted step backward and nestled into his arms.
"Vincent, don't blame me for being heartless. Dean did the right thing."
"You're too stubborn for your own good. If I don't teach you a bloody lesson, how am I supposed to run this company?"
"You believe so much in the gods? Then why don't you pray for your precious Patron Saint to come down and save that old woman?"
"If you don't sign, we pull the plug. This is all your doing. You have no one to blame but yourself."
As she spoke, she walked behind her desk and fished out a small, delicate Incense Altar from beneath one of the decorative pieces.
She rummaged through the ash with a look of revulsion and pulled out the Half Oracle Cup.
"This piece of junk gives me a headache just looking at it. Take it back."
Beverly let out a cold laugh and hurled the cup to the floor like a piece of garbage.
"Who are you trying to curse with this thing?"
Then she raised her foot and brought it down hard, grinding her heel into the cup with all her weight.
The wood groaned under the pressure, cracking and splintering.
"No!" I scrambled across the floor on my hands and knees, throwing myself over the cup, shielding it with both hands.
"Still protecting this piece of trash?"
Dean strode over, building momentum, and drove his foot straight down onto the back of my hand.
A sharp, brittle snap.
The hard sole of his shoe crushed down, mashing skin and flesh out of shape, the force driving straight through to bone.
Searing agony ripped through my entire body in an instant.
A strangled groan escaped my throat. Blood seeped from the wound and dripped, drop by drop, onto the cracked surface of the cup beneath my hand.
When the pain reached its peak, I stopped struggling.
I lowered my head and watched my blood stain the Half Oracle Cup a deep, thorough red.
In that instant, I heard something shatter in the void, a sound beyond sound.
Somewhere in the unseen space between worlds, the heavy Karmic Bond that had tethered me to Delgado Group for three years snapped clean through.
The divine eyes closed. Fortune withdrew.
Beverly felt a sudden, inexplicable wave of panic. The unease clawed at her, making her irritable. "Stop wasting time with him. Just press his thumbprint on it!"
I gathered the bloodstained fragments of the cup, piece by piece, and tucked them against my chest.
Then, with my uninjured left hand, I reached into my jacket and pulled out the exclusive phone Lisa had given me earlier.
Dean assumed I was calling the police. He threw his head back and crowed.
"Go ahead, call the cops! Even if you do, you're the one running a cult and scamming people. Let's see who they arrest."
"This is my turf. You could call God Almighty himself today and it wouldn't make a difference."
I ignored the clown completely.
I pressed the single number stored in the phone and hit speaker.
The call connected after a single ring.
"Ms. Gilbert, the Karmic Bond has been severed cleanly. But I've run into a small problem..."
Silence on the other end. One second.
A voice erupted from the phone's speaker, still on full volume. Lisa Gilbert's words dripped with lethal intent.
"Vincent, close your eyes. Three minutes. I'll make them wish they were dead."
