He Abandoned Me On Snowy Mountain Chapter 08

He Abandoned Me On Snowy Mountain Chapter 08

The acquisition moved forward flawlessly.

I didn’t even have to intentionally target Ethan’s company; that was just the brutal nature of Wall Street.

Under my management, Sterling Holdings aggressively swallowed up the majority of Ethan’s market share.

Ethan had absolutely no will to fight back.

He dumped the company’s mess onto his vice president, completely abandoning his responsibilities to rush

out to Aspen over and over again.

Brooks was sharing these updates like a joke while I was signing a merger agreement.

“Word is, he hired a professional climbing team and spent two weeks searching the base of that cliff,” Brooks said, leaning against my desk with a coffee cup in hand.

“Supposedly looking for that ring you threw away.”

My pen stalled, leaving a dark blotch of ink right on the signature line.

“Did he find it?” I asked casually.

“Yeah,” Brooks scoffed. “But that area gets constant rockfalls. The ring was completely crushed out of shape, and the diamond was smashed to pieces.”

“He’s wearing that ruined ring around his neck and refuses to take it off. He just got back to Denver yesterday -turns out the altitude sickness triggered acute pulmonary edema, and he went straight into the ICU.”

I swapped the paper for another file and kept signing.

“Since when did you change careers to become a gossip columnist, Mr. Vanguard?”

Brooks shrugged. “Just a friendly reminder that a desperate mad dog bites the hardest. Stay safe.”

His warning materialized much sooner than expected.

After work, the moment I stepped out of the parking garage elevator, a shadow suddenly lunged at me from

the darkness.

“Hazel! Go to hell!”

Amber screamed, her face twisted in rage as she drove forward with a glass bottle in her hand.

A sharp, pungent stench erupted from the open bottle.

It was acid.

Already on high alert, I pivoted instantly on my heels and lunged to the side.

Amber missed completely, throwing her momentum forward as the glass bottle shattered violently against a

concrete pillar.

A loud hiss echoed through the garage as white smoke rose, instantly corroding a massive black stain onto

the floor.

She shrieked, spinning around to rush at me again.

But my security guards waiting in the shadows had already closed in, slamming her hard against the ground.

“Let me go! Let me go!”

Amber thrashed and wailed on the concrete, her hair matted across her face, completely stripped of her

usual fragile act.

“Hazel, this is all your fault! If you hadn’t come back, Ethan would never have tried to commit me to an

asylum!”

“You ruined my life, so I’m going to ruin yours!”

I walked over, looking down at her crumpled form.

“Amber, the person who ruined your life was never me.”

“It was your own bottomless greed, and Ethan’s cheap, conditional favoritism.”

I squatted slightly, using a tissue to wipe away a stray drop of fluid that had splashed onto the tip of my heel.

“The man you stole away with all that effort is now throwing his life away for me.”

“Does that feel worse than dying?”

Amber’s screams cut off instantly. She stared up at me, her eyes wide with total despair and burning envy.

The police arrived within minutes, arresting Amber for aggravated assault.

A long sentence in a federal prison was waiting for her next.

I got into my car and rubbed the bridge of my nose.

My phone suddenly buzzed.

An unknown number had sent a photo.

In the picture, Ethan lay pale and lifeless in an ICU bed, hooked up to a ventilator.

And around his neck hung that twisted, mangled diamond ring.

A text message popped up right after.

Hazel, I’m dying. Can you come see me? Just once.

I stared at the text for a moment.

Three years ago in that mountain lodge, when I was writhing in agony, he had snatched the oxygen canister away and told me to stop acting.

Now, he was begging for a single glance from his deathbed.

My fingers moved swiftly, blocking the number and deleting the photo. After it was gone, I checked my trash folder to make sure-not out of lingering doubt, but to confirm that I truly didn’t hesitate at all.

Late-stage devotion is cheaper than dirt.