The Phoenix Diamond

Pain throbbed behind my eyes when I woke. I knew that grinding ache from my previous life, after too many eighteen-hour days bent over a microscope. My hands stayed steady over the world's most valuable stones while pressure built behind my eyes and narrowed the edges of my vision. This time, I remembered every consequence of ignoring it. My phone buzzed on the nightstand. Liam's name lit the screen. My fiancé was the CEO of the Sterling Group. He knew my access codes, controlled the cameras around my workshop, and had arranged my downfall. I stared at his name until the dates aligned. I had returned forty-eight hours before the two-hundred-million-dollar Phoenix Diamond shattered. After that came the forged logs, Chloe's testimony, prison, and the night grief and rage drove me to take my own eyes. The phone kept buzzing. In my last life, I had answered on the first ring. I let this call roll to voicemail. A text followed. *Jade, stop the tantrum and pick up. The Phoenix needs its final polish, and Chloe already botched the initial scan. The team is useless without you.* Chloe, his first love, had already taken my place. He never asked about the headaches that had left me half blind for weeks. I had missed steps, misread labels, and worked with one eye closed while Liam kept repeating the auction deadline. This morning, he still wanted his best tool back at the bench. I called him. He picked up at once. "Finally. Get to the studio. Now." "No." The word came out level and clear. For once, Liam had nothing ready. Then he said, "What did you just say?" "I'm not coming in." "This isn't a request, Jade. Our reputation is on the line. You always fix things. It's what you do." It was what I had always done. When a restoration failed, I stayed until dawn. When a client threatened to walk, Liam sent me into the room with a loupe and a plan. I built the work beneath his empire, and he chose me as the part he could sacrifice. "Find another tool, Liam." I hung up and blocked him. The room went quiet. One refusal would not stop the frame-up. Their preparations had already begun, and Liam could forge attendance records whether I went to the studio or stayed home. I needed independent proof that I could not have touched the Phoenix when it broke. I left my state-of-the-art home studio untouched and drove to the Sterling Group tower. The night security guard knew my irregular hours and waved me through without calling upstairs. At that hour, the elevators and restoration floor were empty. The uncut Phoenix Diamond rested on its velvet pedestal, still raw around the core inclusion. The laser cutter beside it had stored my preferred settings for years. Chloe planned to turn that familiarity into the weapon in my hands. I unlocked a drawer and took out a vial of tracking powder I had designed after an earlier security scare. The transparent, non-corrosive grains left gemstones and equipment unharmed. Ordinary light could not reveal them, yet they glowed bright green under UV and survived repeated washing. I dusted a micro-thin layer across the diamond's housing and the cutter's control panel. Next I checked the workshop's environmental microphone and watched one test file finish uploading. Its audio went to my private encrypted server every sixty seconds, beyond Sterling's cameras, editors, and internal backups. Anyone who touched the equipment would carry the powder, and anyone who spoke near the bench would reach my server. I still needed an alibi Liam could not edit. I drove to the emergency room at Bluecoast General Hospital and gave the intake nurse the full history I had hidden from everyone. Weeks of working through the pain for Liam had finally given me an alibi under hospital control. After the tests, the ophthalmologist pulled his stool closer. "Miss Vance, your corneas are severely detached. The pressure is critical. We need surgery immediately to prevent permanent damage." In my last life, Liam stood beside this same bed and insisted the Phoenix mattered more than one night of pain. I postponed treatment, finished the stone, and later lost my sight in a prison cell with no surgeon nearby. This time, the operation would be documented before the Phoenix was destroyed. My blindness would carry a surgeon's name, a time stamp, and a room full of witnesses. I held the doctor's gaze. "I don't want them repaired. Remove them. Tonight." He jerked back. "Removed? Miss Vance, you would be completely blind. We can save your vision." "I understand. It's my choice. Please schedule it now." On the gurney outside the operating room, a nurse confirmed my name and the bilateral procedure twice. An IV needle entered my arm. The rows of ceiling lights blurred as the anesthetic reached me, while a clock above the doors marked the start time. Soon, the scalpel would take away my sight. I closed my eyes for the last time with sight. When Liam sprang his trap, my hospital chart would place me under a surgeon's scalpel.