Chapter 4

Jade's POV

Thunderous applause hurt my eardrums.

On the big screen, the three bright red characters of Vivian Reynolds seemed to flow down like blood, stinging my eyes.

I turned and pushed through the crowd, fleeing.

Leaving the hotel, I drove to a suspended Reynolds family construction project.

I carried a bottle of dark liquor I'd bought at a roadside convenience store and sat on the high-level steel beams without any safety protection, letting the wind blow.

The city lights spread out below my feet like a giant net.

I looked at my calloused hands, wondering how much longer these hands could draw, how much longer I could struggle in this cesspool reeking of money.

Suddenly, the roar of an engine came from below.

A car door opened. Vivian pulled Lucas out.

She walked across the uneven ground in her heels, stumbling with each step. Lucas patiently supported her waist, as if caring for a fragile piece of porcelain.

What timing.

Vivian insisted on visiting the site of her award-winning work in person.

Ridiculously, she didn't even know where the construction elevator was and had to rely on Lucas for directions.

We ran into each other at the construction elevator.

The elevator door closed. Three people crammed into the narrow iron cage.

The air instantly thinned, mixed with Vivian's sickeningly sweet perfume and the dust from the construction site.

Vivian didn't seem to mind my presence. She excitedly pointed at the night sky, beginning to envision the future.

"Lucas, I want to build the tallest building here. I've even thought of the name-I'll name it after you. Do you like it?"

Lucas looked at her, his eyes so tender they could drown someone. "As long as you designed it, I like it."

Vivian turned to look at me provocatively, then asked Lucas, "What if Jade designed it?"

Lucas didn't even spare me a peripheral glance, coldly spitting out a sentence. "A building without soul is just a pile of garbage."

A pile of garbage.

So that was his definition of the blueprints I'd drawn around the clock for three years.

My sleepless revisions were worthless in his eyes.

I gripped the liquor bottle in my hand tighter, my knuckles white.

Since it's garbage, let's burn it.

Burn it completely clean. Then none of us can have it.

"You're standing in a garbage heap right now." I said coldly.

Vivian shrank into Lucas's arms pitifully. Lucas frowned, about to scold me, when the elevator stopped.

As soon as we exited, several dusty workers surrounded us.

They were subcontractor workers who'd been owed wages for half a year.

Seeing people come up, their emotions instantly flared.

"Pay us! Nobody leaves until we get paid today!"

The lead foreman recognized me at a glance. After all, I was usually the one running around sites solving problems. That so-called genius designer Vivian couldn't even read blueprints, let alone come to such dirty places.

"She's in charge! Get the money from her!"

I was shoved, lost my footing, and fell hard onto a pile of rebar nearby. The sharp threaded steel cut through my arm, burning with pain.

Instinctively, I looked toward Lucas.

In the first second of the chaos, Lucas had pulled Vivian behind him, protecting her seamlessly within his safety circle. He watched coldly as I was surrounded by a group of angry men, as if this were just a farce unrelated to him.

"You're the Reynolds heiress. You should handle this."

His voice cut through the noisy crowd, reaching my ears clearly.

I climbed up from the ground and didn't look at him again.

Grabbing a rusty iron rod from the ground, I stared viciously at the approaching workers.

In the chaos, no one noticed the change in the corner.

A worker's cigarette butt fell onto a mountain of foam insulation boards.

Flames instantly shot up, igniting the polystyrene boards. Black smoke silently snaked out from the corner.

A pungent smell drilled into my nostrils.

It was the characteristic toxic smell of burning polystyrene-suffocating.

I whipped around to find the only escape route completely sealed by a wall of fire.