"That's enough, baby. Don't tire yourself out."
"Why bother picking a fight with some dirty nun? If you don't like it, toss it in the trash."
My whole body trembled. I lunged forward and snatched the bracelet and betrothal documents out of their hands.
Only then did I see it. The beads on the bracelet had been crushed, hairline fractures splitting through the surface.
These were sacred relics, formed from my mentor's own flesh and bone at the moment of her passing. She had left them for me deliberately, with the last of her strength.
"Celeste Pruitt."
I raised my hand and slapped her across the face.
"Why would you destroy this relic? Do you have any idea what it means?"
"It holds everything my mentor poured into this world. It was meant to protect us. To keep us safe."
Before I could say another word, a heavy glass ashtray came flying and cracked against my skull.
"You're disgusting, Ivy. You actually gave me something made from a dead person." John stormed over, ripped the beaded strand from my hand, and ground it under his heel. "Walking around playing fortune teller, trying to con me with a dead woman's bones. 'Blessings.' What a joke."
"Cheap tricks and cold reading, that's all it ever was. And you actually started believing you were some kind of oracle."
I watched the beads shatter. Tears streamed down my face. I crouched on the floor and picked up the fragments one by one, closing my fist around them.
I swallowed the urge to burn everything to the ground. Instead, I lifted my gaze to him, ice-cold.
"John Gilbert. Give me back the betrothal documents. After today, we have nothing to do with each other."
Celeste scooped the documents and my personal belongings off the floor and hurled them straight into my face.
"Here. What is this junk, anyway? Just looking at it gives me the creeps."
I glanced at Celeste. The dark shadow between her brows told me everything I needed to know about her fortune. I had no interest in wasting words on her.
I picked up the documents, turned, and headed for the door.
I'd barely taken a single step when Celeste's mocking voice cut through the room behind me.
"So you'll grab your own things quick enough, but what about the gifts Old Mr. Gilbert and the family gave you? Planning to swallow those whole?"
I stopped. Turned. Looked straight at John with a cold smile and tossed the card onto the coffee table.
I hadn't even made it another step before Celeste's voice slithered out again, darker now.
"Since this is a broken engagement, it should be a clean break. That outfit you're wearing, Miss Chambers... the Gilbert family paid for that too, didn't they? Why don't you take it off and give it back to John."
I stared at Celeste in disbelief, then looked at John. They were doing this on purpose.
Celeste let out a sharp laugh.
"What's the matter? Miss Chambers talks a big game about ending the engagement, but she won't return what isn't hers? Unless, of course, she's planning to use it as an excuse to come back later and sink her claws into John again."
I looked at the smug satisfaction plastered across Celeste's face. I refused to give her the satisfaction of a reaction. I turned to John instead.
"John Gilbert. In the past three years, how many investments did I steer you toward? Every single one of them paid off. Your grandfather started trusting you. You rose through the ranks at Gilbert Corp. Whose doing was that? Don't tell me you've already forgotten."
"Now your little girlfriend wants me to strip naked and walk out over a set of clothes. Is that what you want too?"
John's eyes darted to the side. He cleared his throat, covering the guilt with bluster.
"Ivy, my investments did well because I have good instincts. Don't tell me you think your praying and crystal-ball nonsense had anything to do with it."
"Celeste is right. If we're ending this, let's end it clean."
His gaze traveled slowly down my body and back up again, deliberate and loaded.
"Unless this whole thing is a play. Walk out now, work your way back in later, try to win me over again."
The absurdity of it nearly knocked the wind out of me.
If it hadn't been for my parents' dying wish, if Old Mr. Gilbert hadn't looked after my family's interests all these years, I would never have agreed to this marriage alliance in the first place.
Arrogant. Clueless. And now I could add a third quality to the list: blind.
Whenever he couldn't make a decision on his own, he'd come crawling to me, begging me to consult the spirits, to divine an answer for him. The moment the money rolled in, he was suddenly a self-made genius who needed no one.
Celeste's expression soured instantly. She latched onto John's arm, shaking it.
