"Who knows what kind of dirty tricks he pulled."

"Exactly. He's an absolute disgrace to Delgado Group."

"You... all of you..."

I stared at these people—the same ones who used to call me "bro" and hang on my every word—now turning on me just to suck up to the new director.

The betrayal was sickening.

Beverly issued her ultimatum. "Vincent, everyone here can see the truth plain as day."

"Sign this repayment agreement today, hand over the money, and I'll let you walk out of here."

"Refuse, and I call the police. You'll go to prison."

"Extortion and embezzlement. That goes on your permanent record. No company in this country will ever touch you again."

I looked around the office—this company I'd built up with my own two hands—and let out a cold laugh. "Great. You're all just great."

"I'm not paying back a single cent. Go ahead. Call the cops."

I snatched the agreement off the table, ripped it to shreds, and flung the pieces straight into Beverly's face. Then I turned and headed for the door.

I was done. With my gifts, I could make eight million dollars anywhere.

"Leaving? Not that easy." Dean's eyes turned venomous in an instant. He snapped his fingers, the sound sharp as a cracking whip.

Four or five hulking men rushed in and locked the door behind them.

I tried to force my way through. The moment I reached the door, the guards shoved me back with brutal force.

I stumbled and hit the ground hard. My forehead caught the sharp corner of the coffee table, and something warm immediately trickled down from my temple.

"Let me go!" I struggled to get up.

But Dean walked over and stood above me.

He pulled out his phone, unhurried, almost leisurely, and dialed a video call. Then he shoved the screen in my face.

"Recognize this place?"

One glance was all it took. Every drop of blood in my body went cold.

The video showed my grandmother's nursing home.

Inside the ICU, several men were shoving nurses aside. One of them already had his hand on the breathing tube—the tube keeping my grandmother alive.

She was unconscious, but her brow was deeply furrowed, as if she could feel some terrible pain even through the coma.

"Stop! Don't touch her!" I thrashed against the guards, but they pinned me to the floor.

"Dean, if you lay a finger on my grandmother, I'll kill you!"

A fist slammed into my face. Stars exploded behind my eyes.

"Shut your mouth, you worthless nobody." Dean grabbed a fistful of my hair and wrenched my head up, forcing me to watch the screen. "Here's something you didn't know. Yesterday, I used the money you earned to buy that nursing home."

"Your grandmother's life is in my hands now. One word from me, and they pull the plug."

On the screen, the hand actually switched off the ventilator.

My grandmother's body seized violently. The heart monitor shrieked, its alarm piercing through the phone's tiny speaker.

"No! No, stop!" I fought to hold back the tears, but every wall inside me had already crumbled.

"Please. Don't hurt her. I'll sign. Whatever you want me to sign, I'll do it."

Dean smiled, satisfied. He spoke into the phone: "Hold off for now."

Then he casually picked up a cup of dirty water that had been sitting beside the cleaning supplies and poured it onto the carpet in front of me.

"You want your grandma to live? Sure."

"See, in a modern, rational society, it's survival of the fittest. Nobody needs superstitious old deadweight like her."

He pointed at the puddle of filthy water on the floor. "But hey, I'm a generous guy."

"Get on your knees right now. Lick that clean. Then sign the papers. And maybe, out of the goodness of my heart, I'll let her live one more night."

The room went deathly silent.

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."