"This is murder! Murder gets you the death penalty! I'm giving you a chance to buy your worthless life back, and you don't know when to be grateful? You're still running your mouth?"
"Pay up! Or every last thing on this truck is ours!"
In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to get up and beat the life out of this piece of trash—the one who'd been driving illegally, pinned the blame on me, and was now trying to shake me down.
But I knew I couldn't.
That truck didn't just carry supplies for the orphanage. It carried the seedlings—irreplaceable, priceless seedlings.
I couldn't play hero and let the people who trusted me suffer the loss.
I forced myself to my feet, swallowing the agony that screamed through every inch of my body, and choked down my pride.
"But I don't have that kind of money—"
A boot slammed into my chest and sent me flying.
"Then why the hell are you wasting my time?"
"Boys, keep searching! This punk's got something valuable stashed up front!"
The man climbed back onto the truck and started hurling every cardboard box over the side, one after another, like he was taking out his rage on them.
I tried to stop him, but my broken ribs made it nearly impossible to even sit up.
Claire—the teacher whose head the man had split open earlier—had already bandaged her wound. She knelt beside me and helped me upright.
"Easy," she said. "Don't push yourself."
"I already called the police. They'll be here any minute. These guys won't be strutting around much longer."
But I shook my head and pointed toward the front of the cab.
"There's a crate of research seedlings up there. They cannot get their hands on it."
Claire's eyes widened. She started toward the cab to help me move the crate down.
But the man on the truck caught our gestures out of the corner of his eye, and his face lit up.
"I know where this little rat hid the good stuff!"
He went straight for the cab, pulled out the crate, and got ready to pry it open.
My heart climbed into my throat.
Claire stepped forward.
"Stop!"
"This cargo belongs to him. What you're doing is robbery. Aren't you afraid of getting arrested? That's eight to ten years behind bars."
The man laughed.
"A debt's a debt. Only fair he pays up."
"Besides, this lowlife rammed into me first! I could've had him charged with murder, and he wants to accuse me of robbery?"
His shamelessness made my blood boil. I forced the words out again.
"I didn't hit you! You were driving illegally. You caused the accident!"
That set him off. He jumped down from the truck, raised the crate over his head, and brought it crashing toward my skull.
"You just don't quit, do you?"
"A killer with this much attitude—I'm gonna teach you the lesson your parents never did!"
I didn't dodge. Instinct made me throw my hands up to catch the crate.
But it smashed through my fingers, cracked against my head, and shattered completely.
Ginseng seedlings dangled from my hair, my clothes, scattered across the dirt.
In that instant, my heart sank to the bottom of an abyss.
The man looked at the mess on the ground and curled his lip with total indifference.
"The hell? I thought it was something worth a damn. Just a bunch of rotten weeds."
"If you'd told me your whole truck was full of garbage, I wouldn't have bothered climbing up there."
Then, as if to make a point, he ground the last surviving seedlings into the dirt beneath his heel.
I stared at the seedlings—every single one of them destroyed.
The fury inside me went quiet. Still. Cold.
I looked the man dead in the eye and spoke, slow and deliberate.
"You're finished."
"Ten lifetimes in prison wouldn't be enough to pay for what you just did."
He didn't take a single word of it seriously. He was still posturing, still puffing his chest.
"The hell are you babbling about now?"
"I'm telling you—today, you either pay up, or you don't leave here breathing!"
He raised his fist, ready to hit me again.
A voice cut through the air from behind him like a whip crack.
"Back off!"
Out of nowhere, over a dozen semis had rolled in and formed a wall around the scene.
