5
Kenton carried Daisybelle away, leaving the kitchen in suffocating silence.
Staring at the doorway where his figure had long since disappeared, Jada finally collapsed to the floor, feeling utterly drained.
Tears streamed down her cheeks—tears for Jodie and for herself.
Her mind drifted back to the past, to when Kenton had once placed her hand against his chest, his voice both devout and tender.
“Jada, in this lifetime, I will only ever believe in you.”
It turned out, this was what his so-called belief amounted to—cheap, fragile, worthless.
She scrubbed her tears away with trembling hands, stood up, and stumbled back to the bedroom.
The next time she woke, it was to the shrill ringing of her phone.
Still groggy, Jada answered. A rushed, anxious voice came from the other end.
“Hello, is this Jada McNamee? Please, you need to come to the cemetery right away. Someone claiming to be your friend is trying to take your sister’s ashes.”
The words hadn’t even fully landed when Jada shot upright in bed.
In her mind, the image of Daisybelle’s eyes from last night—when Kenton carried her away—flashed vividly.
A sharp pang struck Jada’s chest.
She didn’t have time to think. Throwing on her clothes in a hurry, she rushed out the door and made straight for the cemetery.
The moment she reached the gates, she caught sight of Daisybelle and Dapper walking out from inside.
And in Dapper’s hands—was Jodie’s urn.
“Stop!”
Jada lunged forward, trying to snatch it back. But Dapper simply stepped back, dodging her reach, and she grabbed at nothing.
“Daisybelle, give my sister back to me!” Jada’s eyes were bloodshot, her voice trembling with fury as it nearly spilled over.
“Give her back? Of course.” Daisybelle took the urn from Dapper, her lips curling into a cruel, twisted smile. “As long as you apologize and beg for our forgiveness, I’ll return your sister to you.”
“What did you just say?” Jada’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“You hurt both of us,” Daisybelle said, her grin deepening. “Don’t you think you owe us an apology?”
Her gaze hardened, sharp with cruelty.
“What’s wrong? You’re not willing?”
Even as she spoke, she shot Dapper a meaningful glance.
Catching her signal, Dapper gave a knowing nod, then pulled out an iron rod from who-knows-where. He began advancing toward Jada, step by step.
“You—what are you trying to do?”
The instant her eyes fell on the iron rod, Jada’s face went deathly pale.
She staggered backward, but Dapper only closed in closer.
“What do you think?” he sneered, his voice laced with menace. His eyes gleamed with feral malice.
“Jada, aren’t you the capable one? Weren’t you going to drag me into court? Weren’t you going to cut me down yourself?”
With each mocking word, he pressed her further into a deserted corner.
Watching her wide eyes brimming with terror, his laughter deepened.
“Truth is, you made me quite happy last night. If not for that, I wouldn’t even be bothering today. But…” His grin turned vicious. “It’s a pity. You and your sister are both the same kind of cheap whores.”
With a mocking sigh, he shook his head as though in regret. Then, raising the iron rod high, he swung it down hard—straight at her knee.
“Ah—!”
A piercing scream tore through the cemetery as pain ripped through Jada’s body. Her knees buckled under the blow, forcing her to collapse heavily onto the ground.
Watching her writhe in agony, Daisybelle stepped forward, her high heels clicking sharply against the stone path.
She ground her heel into the back of Jada’s hand—the hand that still tried to support her trembling body. Her voice dripped with venom and long-nursed resentment.
“Sure, Jada, you’re beautiful. Yes, you’ve always outshone me in grades. But it was me who met Kenton first. It was me who loved him first. So tell me—why was it you who married him in the end? Why you?”
Her voice grew more frenzied with each word, her heel pressing down harder and harder.
The searing pain in both her knee and hand left Jada drenched in cold sweat. Her clothes clung to her body, soaked through.
She forced her trembling gaze up to meet Daisybelle’s twisted, hate-filled expression.
Her voice shook violently, but she managed to choke out, “Now… give Jodie back to me!”
“Back to you? Sure.”
Daisybelle sneered, raising the urn high in her hands.
“I’ll return her to you right now.”
And with that, she hurled the urn down with all her strength—shattering it to the ground before Jada’s eyes.
