The office was deathly silent.

Robin Lambert and the others wore expressions of barely concealed anguish, but with the bodyguards standing watch, none of them dared make a 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 dirt, trampled underfoot along with the grime.

But I couldn't let Grandma die. She was the only family I had left in this world.

Through the haze of despair, my eyes burning red, I fixed my gaze on Bertram, who stood off to the side without so much as a flicker of emotion.

"Mr. 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 wanted to jump off that ledge, I was the one who pulled you back."

"You knelt before the shrine and swore a sacred oath that you'd care for my grandmother like she was your own. You can't do this!"

At the words "sacred oath," Bertram's eye twitched.

But instead of stopping Tamara, he took a step back in disgust and slid his arm around her waist.

"Philippa, don't blame me for being heartless. Tamara's right to do this."

"You've always been 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 in all that spiritual nonsense so much? Why don't you pray for your precious gods to come down and save that old hag?"

"If you don't sign, we pull the plug. You brought this on yourself. Don't blame anyone else."

As he spoke, he walked behind the desk and reached beneath a decorative piece, pulling out a small, delicate Censer.

He rummaged through the ash with a look of revulsion, fishing out the other half of the Holy Cup.

"This piece of junk gives me a headache just looking at it. Take it back."

Bertram let out a cold laugh and hurled the Holy Cup to the ground like a piece of trash.

"Who exactly were you trying to curse with this thing?"

Then he raised his foot and brought it down hard, grinding his heel into the Holy Cup.

The wood groaned and cracked under the pressure.

"No!" I scrambled across the floor on hands and knees, throwing myself over the Holy Cup, shielding it with both hands.

"You're still protecting this piece of garbage?"

Tamara strode over, building momentum, and drove the point of her heel straight into the back of my hand.

A soft, wet puncture.

The stiletto pierced clean through my skin and sank into the flesh.

Searing agony ripped through my entire body.

I screamed. Blood dripped steadily, falling onto the cracked surface of the Holy Cup beneath my hands.

When the pain reached its peak, I stopped struggling.

I lowered my head and watched my blood soak into the fractured half of the Holy Cup until it was stained completely red.

In that instant, I heard something snap in the void, a brittle, resonant crack that existed beyond the physical world.

Somewhere in the unseen space between fate and consequence, the heavy Karmic Thread that had bound me to Delgado Group for three years shattered completely.

The divine closed its eyes. Fortune was reclaimed.

Bertram felt an inexplicable surge of panic. The unease clawed at him, making him irritable. "Stop wasting time with her. Just press her thumbprint on it!"

I gathered the bloodstained fragments of the Holy Cup, piece by piece, and tucked them against my chest.

Then, with my uninjured left hand, I reached inside my jacket and pulled out the private phone Kevin had given me earlier.

Tamara assumed I was calling the police. She threw her head back and sneered without a shred of restraint.

"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 himself today and it wouldn't make a difference."

I ignored the clowns entirely.

I pressed the single contact saved in the phone and hit speaker.

The line rang once before it was picked up.

"Mr. Farley, my Karmic Thread has been severed clean. But I've run into a small problem..."

The line went silent for one second.

Then, through the phone's speaker, Kevin Farley's voice cut through the room, dripping with murderous intent.

"Philippa. Close your eyes. In three minutes, I'll make them wish they were dead."