More Than a Hillbilly Girl

My name is Gabrielle Johns, and I have a "knack" -a gut feeling that always comes true-and a secret curse: anyone who hurts me gets their comeuppance, disastrously proportional. My prediction of a 100-to-1 long shot winning the Kentucky Derby made me famous, and when Wesley Fowler, owner of a failing bourbon empire, offered life-changing money to save his family, I agreed.

But the moment I stepped onto his opulent Lexington estate, his vicious daughter, Madisyn, stormed in. Mistaking me for a "homewrecker" secretly meeting her fiancé, Anthony, her eyes seared with rage.

She and her friends dragged me out, throwing me onto the sharp gravel. They kicked me repeatedly, mocking my accent and clothes, until Madisyn screamed, "You think you can take what' s mine?!" and slammed my face into the stones. The final blow came when her boot shattered my mother's locket, the last thing I had of her.

A silent, freezing fury consumed me. Through the pain, a cold certainty settled: the curse was awake.

I looked Madisyn dead in the eye, my voice low and steady, "You' re about to lose what' s most important to you." Madisyn scoffed, but then stumbled, falling face-first onto a sharp ironwork, gashing her perfect face. Her friends watched in horror. "You witch!" she shrieked, then grabbed an antique hatpin, pinning me to the ground. "This is for my face!" she hissed, plunging it into my throat.

As darkness consumed me, I heard Wesley Fowler' s voice, but it wasn't compassion. He looked at my bleeding throat, at his ruined investment, roaring at Madisyn, "You' ve destroyed our last chance!" He chose his influential but disfigured daughter' s "modern plan" over me, leaving me for dead in favor of a PR stunt. My father, with his own gut feeling, arrived just in time, scooping me up and promising a hell the Fowlers couldn' t imagine.

My vocal cords were shredded, the doctors said I might never speak again. But a tiny, stubborn whisper grew inside me: I will speak again. What happened to the Fowlers after their desperate choice? Did their "modern plan" save them, or did my curse truly deliver its retribution? Find out how a hillbilly girl with a secret knack brought down an empire.