The Tree’s Bones Hold His Sweetheart’s Crime

Chapter 4

Rosalie's POV:

Laughter quickly returned to the dinner table, each cheerful sound slicing into my heart like a honed blade.

Their callous discussion of the events from three years ago dragged my mind backward, plunging me into the depths of that humid summer night from which I would never return.

Jerold and I had promised our lives to one another beneath the shade of the ancient ginkgo tree.

He was a brilliant doctor of botany, and he was always a man of few words, choosing to keep his emotions heavily guarded.

I had spent years convincing myself that he was simply cold by nature.

But two months before my murder, I saw the way he smiled at Judith. It was in that quiet moment that I realized how utterly blind I had been.

I had gone to his laboratory to surprise him. Peering through the glass window of the door, I froze.

Judith was standing on her tiptoes, her fingers lingering intimately on his collar as she adjusted it.

Jerold was looking down at her, his gaze overflowing with an aching tenderness.

When I pushed the door open, Judith merely offered a bright, flawless smile, casually claiming she was just helping Jerold fix a crooked tie.

Jerold didn't even bother to offer an explanation.

He simply gave me a dismissive glance and told me not to overthink things.

After that, scenes like that became more and more frequent.

The younger students in the lab began to whisper, gossiping that Jerold and Judith were the ones who truly belonged together.

Unable to bear the humiliation any longer, I confronted Jerold.

He merely knit his brows in deep irritation. "Are you serious? Judith is your father's student and my childhood friend. Stop imagining things."

Heartbroken, I ended our engagement.

Somehow, news of our breakup spread.

Overnight, an onslaught of voices rushed to Judith's defense.

My father called me home and scolded me. "Judith is such a sensible, sweet girl. Stop being so incredibly petty and insecure!"

Even my mentor, Kaden, tried to soothe my doubts. "I've known Jerold for years, Rosalie. He won't betray you."

Even Jerold's mother called me. "I've known Judith since she was a little girl. I can guarantee you've misunderstood her.

Not a single soul stood by my side.

I was forced to swallow my bitter tears and strangle my own intuition, trying to convince myself that I was just being paranoid.

But then, just days after I successfully saved the mutated ginkgo sapling, catastrophe struck.

The leaves of that miraculous little sapling possessed rare, breathtaking veins of pure gold that seemed to shimmer like spun sunlight.

I immediately reported the discovery.

Kaden came in person to examine it and confirmed that it was the world's first naturally mutated Golden Ginkgo. Its conservative valuation exceeded a hundred million dollars.

Somehow, word of this priceless treasure leaked out.

One evening, as the sun began to dip below the horizon, Judith unexpectedly arrived at the base of the mountain.

She claimed my father had sent her to study under my guidance for a few days.

Though every instinct in my body screamed against it, I swallowed my pride for the sake of my father and let her stay.

That night, I suddenly remembered that I hadn't checked on the sapling before bed.

A sense of unease settled over me.

Unable to sleep, I put on a jacket and headed toward the nursery.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I found. There, beneath the heavy shadows of the trees, Judith was conversing in hushed, hurried whispers with a group of rough-looking strangers.

Under the pale moonlight, her voice drifted over to me. "The mutated one is in the eastern section, right in the third row. Rosalie pointed it out to me earlier today."

The blood in my veins turned to ice.

I carefully slunk back into the shadows of the cabin, my hands shaking violently as I dialed the police.

Desperate to warn the rest of the staff, I reached for the dormitory telephone, only to find that the cord had been cleanly severed. Judith had cut the lines.

Left with no other choice, I had to act alone.

I sprinted into the nursery, scanning the hundreds of plants until my eyes landed on the unassuming Golden Ginkgo.

It was still so small, looking barely any different from the standard saplings surrounding it.

I carefully tucked the precious plant deep inside my jacket, pressing it flat against my skin, and bolted for the mountain exit.

I hadn't even cleared 650 feet before the blinding glare of flashlights cut through the darkness behind me.

"Rosalie, it's so late." Judith's voice echoed through the trees, sweet and perfectly natural, just like the way she always called my name.

But in that pitch-black forest, it sounded like the tolling of a death knell.

I didn't waste a breath replying. I simply buried my head and ran with everything I had.

Even when sharp rocks tore through my shoes and jagged branches sliced across my face, I refused to slow down.

But the poachers were far faster.

They flanked me from both sides, throwing me onto the damp earth and pinning me down.

Judith strolled over at a leisurely pace, crouching down to look at me with an amused smile. The Golden Ginkgo was hidden tightly against my body, and beneath the bulk of my heavy coat, she didn't notice it.

"Rosalie, why must you always be so incredibly stubborn?" she sighed, shaking her head.

"If you had just closed your eyes and pretended you didn't see anything, none of this would have happened."

I thrashed against my captors, screaming for help at the top of my lungs, but Judith brought her hand down across my face in a vicious, stinging slap.

"Shut up!" she snarled. "Didn't you desperately want to break up with Jerold? Let me do you a favor and make it permanent."

She stood up and turned to the imposing men. "Get rid of her. Make sure there isn't a single trace left behind."

They brutally broke my arms and legs, muffling my agonizing screams before shoving my broken body into the hollow of a massive ginkgo tree.

Then, they began to shovel suffocating mounds of wet mud over me, filling the cavity to the brim.

The suffocating earth forced its way into my nose and throat.

I clawed at the inside of the trunk with my remaining strength, my fingernails tearing away until the rough wood was stained with my blood.

Before the last flicker of my consciousness faded into the dark, I peered through a tiny splintered c***k in the bark and saw Judith holding my phone. Her fingers flew across the screen as she typed.

It was only recently that I managed to piece together the full horror of what she did next.

She had fabricated an entire history of text messages between me and the poachers, framing me as a greedy thief who had agreed to sell them the Golden Ginkgo for a hundred million dollars.

She wept bitterly in front of the police, spinning a tragic tale of how she had caught me meeting with the criminals and tried to beg me to confess.

According to her story, I had coldly refused her pleas and chosen to flee into the night with the smugglers.

My phone's GPS data and call logs had all been meticulously altered to fit her narrative.

Her web of lies was riddled with holes, and she had no concrete proof outside of that phone.

And yet, not a single person questioned her story.

Even Jerold, the man who was supposed to be my husband, accepted her words without a second thought.

He immediately took to Twitter to publicly disown me and sever our engagement.

His swift public condemnation solidified my guilt in the eyes of the world, pinning me to a pillar of eternal shame and leaving me to be spit upon by total strangers.

And so, my broken body, along with the buried truth of that horrific night, was left to rot inside the heart of the tree.