The Billionaire’s obsession

Rain did not wash things clean.

That was a lie people told themselves to make the storms bearable.

Here, on the edge of the limestone quarry, the rain only made things heavy. It soaked into Karly Lowe's oversized sweatshirt, dragging the cotton against her skin like a second, suffocating layer. It turned the dirt beneath her converse sneakers into a slick, treacherous paste.

She shivered. The cold was not just in the air. It was in her marrow.

Two meters away, Ardell Lowe stood with her back to the wind. She wasn't looking at the view. She was looking at a document in her hands. The paper was wet, the ink likely running, but Karly knew what it was.

A life insurance policy.

"You let it lapse," Ardell screamed over the wind. Her hair was plastered to her skull, making her face look skeletal. "The payment for the car! You let the insurance lapse before your father crashed!"

Karly took a step back. Her heel caught on a loose rock. The stone tumbled over the edge, clattering down into the abyss. It took a long time to hit the bottom.

"I didn't," Karly said. Her voice was a broken thing, raspy from crying, raspy from the screaming match that had started in the trailer and ended here. "I paid it. I showed you the receipt."

"Liar!"

Hakeem stepped out from behind Ardell. He cupped his hands around a lighter, the flame illuminating the hollows of his eyes. He lit a cigarette, took a drag, and exhaled smoke that was instantly snatched away by the gale.

"She's lying, Ma," Hakeem said. His voice was calm. Terrifyingly calm. "She kept the money. Probably spent it on books. Or stash."

"I paid it!" Karly shouted, the injustice burning her throat like acid. "And it wasn't an accident! The brakes lines were cut! I saw the shears in your truck, Hakeem!"

The air between them changed.

It stopped being about money. It stopped being about a family argument.

Hakeem dropped the cigarette. He ground it out with the toe of his boot. He looked at Ardell. Ardell looked at Karly. There was no love in that look. There wasn't even anger anymore.

There was only calculation.

"You know too much," Hakeem said. He took a step forward.

Karly turned. She tried to run toward the line of trees that marked the road, but her left leg gave way. Hakeem had kicked her in the shin back at the house. The pain flared hot and white, buckling her knee.

She scrambled, fingers clawing at the mud.

A hand shoved her back. Hard.

Gravity reversed.

The world tilted. The gray sky swapped places with the brown earth. For a second, Karly was flying.

Then she hit.

The impact was a thunderclap inside her own skull.

She landed on a ledge of jagged shale, thirty feet down. The sound of her spine snapping was louder than the rain. It was a dry, crisp crack, like a dead branch stepping on a winter morning.

She tried to scream, but her lungs refused to expand.

Pain didn't come immediately. It waited, hovering, letting the shock settle in first. Then it arrived, a tidal wave of agony that started at her waist and obliterated everything else.

She couldn't move her legs. She couldn't feel her feet.

Above her, on the lip of the cliff, a flashlight beam cut through the gloom. It danced over her broken body.

"Is she dead?" Ardell's voice drifted down, distorted by the distance.