Chapter4

Time flew. In the blink of an eye, the seventh day arrived.

For the past few days, Hunter and Wendy had been riding high, reveling in their smug triumph.

They plastered the media with praises of Wendy’s "miracle" medical skills while sending thugs to trash my studio. They smeared my name everywhere, branding me a vicious, cold-blooded quack.

Too bad for them. Before those thugs could even touch a single chair, Howard’s bodyguards snapped their legs and tossed them out like garbage.

The night of the banquet arrived. Beneath the blazing chandeliers of the grand hotel, I linked my arm through Howard’s and made a high-profile entrance into the hall.

The buzzing room plunged into instant silence. Every eye locked onto us.

"How does she have the nerve to show her face? Dumped by her fiancé, and she even viciously cursed Mr. Hunter!"

"Exactly. Wendy and Mr. Hunter are a match made in heaven. That low-class trash is just a homewrecker."

The crowd didn't bother hiding their malice. I tuned out the venom, my gaze slicing straight to the stage, locking onto Hunter and Wendy.

Hunter stood tall in a bespoke suit, the picture of a thriving heir. But the air around him was choked with a suffocatingly heavy cologne.

Ordinary people wouldn't notice, but I saw right through the facade. Beneath that expensive fabric, his skin had already taken on the ashen, rotting pallor of a corpse.

"Sister, you actually had the guts to show up." Wendy glided down from the stage, clinging to Hunter's arm, a triumphant smirk on her face. "Hunter is perfectly fine—healthier than ever, in fact. You lost the bet. Time to pay up."

Snatching the documents from his assistant, Hunter slammed the annulment agreement and the zero-asset waiver right in my face.

"Sign it, Scarlett! Then get the hell out of my sight!"

I didn’t even glance at the papers. Instead, I slowly raised my eyes, staring into Hunter’s eerily pale face.

"Tell me, Hunter," my voice was dangerously calm, "have your joints been feeling unnaturally stiff lately? At night, does it feel like thousands of bugs are gnawing through your bone marrow?"

Hunter’s face twitched violently. He forced a rigid composure. "Stop playing your sick mind games! I’m perfectly fine!"

"Are you?" I sneered. "Then do you dare loosen your tie? Let everyone see the skin on your neck."

"Who the hell do you think you are to order me around?!" Enraged, Hunter lunged forward, raising his hand to strike me.

He never made contact. In a blinding blur, Howard viciously kicked Hunter right in the back of the knee!

Crack!

A bone-chilling snap echoed. Hunter let out a blood-curdling shriek and crashed to his knees, right at my feet.

"Uncle! Why are you defending this bitch?!" Hunter howled in agony. "She’s just a fraud clinging to a dead engagement!"

Howard stared down at him with freezing contempt. "Watch your filthy mouth. She is my chosen woman. You don't have the right to breathe in her direction."

The entire hall erupted in shock. No one could believe that the elusive, terrifying Howard—who had been off the grid for days—was publicly claiming and protecting me.

Panic-stricken, Wendy scrambled over to prop Hunter up, screaming hysterically, "Security! Security! Throw them out!"

"Save your breath. We're leaving." My eyes remained dead-locked on Hunter’s collar, which had popped open during his frantic struggle.

There, creeping up his once-fair skin, was a sickening, necrotic purplish-black rot.

"Hunter... your time is up." I let out a low, chilling laugh.

The very next second, a thick drop of festering, purulent blood seeped from his collarline. It splattered onto the pristine marble floor.

Instantly, a suffocating, rancid stench of death filled the air!

I raised my wrist, my eyes tracing the sweeping second hand of my watch. I started the countdown. "Three."

Hunter clutched his neck in sheer terror.

"Two."

Wendy shrieked, stumbling backward in horror.

"One."

The moment the word left my lips, it was as if a demonic seal had been violently ripped apart.