Chapter 3

As he said that, he reached out to snatch the leather satchel resting on my lap.

I did not even look up. My wrist flicked.

A slender steel pin soundlessly slipped between my fingers and swiftly sank into his forearm.

“Ah!”

Mason cried out in pain. His entire arm went numb in an instant and dropped limply to his side. He could not even hold his fork.

He stared at me in terror, as if he had seen a ghost.

“What... What did you do to me?”

I ignored him and turned my gaze to the middle-aged man sitting across from me, Mr. Danson. He was the father of the “poisoned” woman.

I said calmly, “Mr. Danson, your daughter wasn’t poisoned. She’s pregnant. The illness was a reaction to the pregnancy being unstable.”

A sudden expression of shock rippled across Mr. Danson’s face.

I then turned to William, who was staring at me in stunned silence.

I fixed my gaze on his head.

“Uncle William, your aura is collapsing into a dark spiral. A violent spike is forming above you. Before midnight, you’re heading straight for a serious, possibly bloody accident. My advice for you is not to drive tonight. And stay away from anything sharp or metallic.”

“Nonsense!” William snapped with a dark expression. “You insolent little brat!”

Mr. Danson was already on his feet. He shot me a look of sheer disbelief before hurrying from the dining room to make a phone call.

Ted stayed stone-faced the entire time, silent.

The dinner basically fell apart after what I said.

Mason’s arm did not regain any sensation even by the end of the dinner. He had to be helped back to his room, which was a pathetic sight.

I took my time to finish the food on my plate.

Good.

I simply wondered if they would still have the nerve to shout at me like that when the real storm finally hit.

Things proved me right even sooner than I expected.

By the next day, news had spread all over the social circuit that Mr. Danson’s daughter was, in fact, pregnant. Unwilling to tell her family, she had been taking unauthorized medication, which destabilized the pregnancy.

Mr. Danson called the Stratton family himself. While he did not say it explicitly, his tone was laden with gratitude and an unspoken apology directed at me.

Suddenly, all those people who had mocked and doubted me were no longer as certain.

That night, William was driving home when a black cat darted across his path. Swerving to avoid it, he lost control and crashed into a roadside barrier.

A piece of decorative metal dislodged from the steering wheel and cut his face.

It had been exactly midnight.

The blood omen had come to pass.

Ted was more enraged than ever. He stormed into my attic with bloodshot eyes.

“You! This is your doing! You jinx! Security! Get him out of my house! Now!”

He pointed at the door and gave a final order of expulsion.

A profound calm settled over me.

Some people really had ignorance carved into their bones.

I did not resist as two large security guards seized me by the arms and began dragging me out.

Just as one of my feet was about to cross the threshold of the mansion, Ted’s personal assistant stumbled through the door in a panic. He said in a trembling voice, “M–Mr. Stratton, we have a problem! Our core company servers have crashed! All at once!

Ted’s expression fell. “What? Where’s the tech team? Tell them to fix it immediately!”

The assistant looked on the verge of tears. “They’re all stumped, sir! They can’t find any hardware failures or software bugs. It’s as if... As if the whole system’s been hexed!”

Almost at the same moment, the helper’s panicked scream came from upstairs.

“Mr. Arthur! Mr. Arthur has collapsed! His pulse… He barely has a pulse!”

Ted staggered as if he had been struck. His face turned pale.

His company was his life’s work. Arthur was the father he revered.

The two pillars of his world were crumbling simultaneously without warning.

He was overwhelmed and stunned. He muttered to himself, “How is this happening? It doesn’t… It doesn’t make sense.”

I pulled free from the guards’ grip. Then, I turned around and walked up to him.

Looking at his devastated face, I asked with a measured tone, “Now… Are you still going to put all your faith in science?”