Chapter 2 - The Silver Pendant
The massive security guards aggressively charged through the crowded sea of panicked socialites.
The barefoot boy immediately released the girl's hand and sprinted desperately toward the catering kitchen doors.
Without his solid support, the girl collapsed heavily back into her padded wheelchair.
She watched in absolute horror as three armed men chased her only true friend out of the grand ballroom.
Before he vanished completely through the swinging wooden doors, the boy intentionally dropped his silver pendant onto the floor.
The girl quickly threw her pink silk shawl over the necklace to entirely hide it from her father's view.
Her father rushed to her side, frantically checking her legs for any fresh injuries while aggressively barking orders into his radio.
"You are never to speak to that filthy street rat again," he commanded with absolute, terrifying authority.
The girl remained completely silent, her heart pounding wildly against her fragile chest.
Later that night, she sat entirely alone in her dark, heavily monitored bedroom on the top floor of the massive estate.
She carefully pulled the heavy silver pendant from beneath her thick down blankets.
The metal was freezing cold, beautifully engraved with a strange symbol resembling a broken hourglass surrounded by sharp thorns.
She pressed the center of the hourglass design, and the pendant surprisingly popped open with a quiet, satisfying click.
Inside the tiny metallic casing was a perfectly preserved digital microchip.
Her hands shook violently as she retrieved her encrypted school tablet from her wooden nightstand drawer.
She plugged the tiny microchip directly into the designated port and anxiously waited for the black screen to load.
A hidden, highly classified video file immediately appeared brightly on her screen.
The grainy security footage clearly showed the dark garage of their family estate on the exact night of her paralyzing car crash.
A tall man dressed in dark clothing was actively and maliciously cutting the brake lines of her mother's expensive vehicle.
The girl gasped loudly and forcefully covered her mouth to physically stop herself from screaming out loud.
The mysterious man in the security video turned his face directly toward the hidden camera lens.
It was not a random mechanic or a rival corporate spy trying to destroy their powerful family.
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It was her own father, holding a pair of heavy wire cutters in his grease-stained hands.
Before she could fully process the horrifying betrayal, her heavy bedroom door violently burst open.
