She forced Quinn to grab explosives and a pickaxe and head straight for what looked most like a "gold mine entrance." In reality, it was an abandoned limestone cave with rock layers that had long since destabilized.
"Dig! Dig until you drop!"
Jade stood at the cave mouth, still clutching my photo. She tore it to shreds.
Quinn was drunk, but a hunter's instincts screamed danger.
"Woman, something's wrong here… the rocks are crumbling…"
"Shut up! Evelyn got rich in Seaview City! Are we supposed to beg while sitting on a gold mine? Dig!"
She kicked him square in the back.
Rage flared through Quinn. Fueled by alcohol, he swung the pickaxe down hard.
Rumble—
Not the sound of gold.
The sound of a mountain collapsing.
The rock ceiling caved in like crumbling tofu.
In that split second, Jade saw Quinn lunge toward her and shove her toward the entrance.
It wasn't love.
Pure survival instinct—finding something to brace against, using it to launch himself out.
Too late.
Boulders crashed down.
More than half of Quinn's body was crushed to pulp. He died instantly.
Jade had been pushed partway out, but her left leg was still pinned beneath a boulder weighing several hundred pounds.
Only her shrieks echoed through the valley.
By the time villagers pulled her free, the leg was destroyed. Comminuted fracture. Nerve death.
Amputation.
When Jade woke, she was lying on a clinic bed.
Her left leg was gone.
"My gold… where's my gold…"
She murmured to herself.
The nurse looked at her like she was crazy.
"Gold, my ass. Your man is dead, the house collapsed, and you're a cripple now. The cops still have to investigate whether you used illegal explosives."
Jade was struck like lightning.
In my past life, I married Quinn Mason and became rich.
In this life, she married Quinn Mason and became a widow and a cripple.
Why?
This script wasn't right!
At that moment, I was in my office in Seaview City, signing a factory construction contract.
Tyler Chavez poured me a cup of coffee.
"Ms. Fox, your hometown called. They said your younger sister had an accident."
I blew on the steam rising from the coffee, my expression calm.
"Oh, got it. Send two hundred dollars back. Consider it… a gift."
Two hundred dollars.
It bought out the last of the sisterly bond between us.
But this was only the beginning.
A person like Jade, as long as she still had breath in her body, wouldn't stay quiet.