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.

My name is Gabrielle Johns, and people in my small Appalachian town say I have a "knack."

It' s not magic. It' s a gut feeling that, when I say it out loud, just happens to come true.

When I was a kid, I told my dad a dry creek bed felt like it had water underneath. A week later, a drilling company found a new aquifer right there.

In high school, I said the old failing diner would be "saved by a miracle." The next month, a famous food blogger' s car broke down in front of it. His review went viral, and now there' s a line out the door every weekend.

My knack is a quiet thing, a little whisper in my gut.

But it has a shadow, a darker side I never speak of. A curse of consequence.

Anyone who hurts me, or breaks something I love, gets it back. Proportional. Disastrous.

Last year, a boy from a rival high school cornered me and broke my arm. Two days later, he fell off a roof and shattered his leg in three places.

I don't control it. It just happens.

This year, the knack got louder. I was scrolling through an online horse racing forum and got a feeling about a horse named "Appalachian Gold." A 100-to-1 long shot. I wrote a post.

"This one' s going to win the Derby. It' s a sure thing."

People laughed. They called me a dumb hillbilly.

Then Appalachian Gold won the Kentucky Derby. It was the biggest upset in fifty years.

My little forum post exploded. Reporters called. But one call was different.

It was from a man named Wesley Fowler. He owned the most famous horse breeding and bourbon empire in Kentucky. An empire that, according to the whispers on the business news, was on the verge of total collapse.

He' d heard the rumors about my knack. He saw me as his last hope.

He offered me a life-changing amount of money. Enough to save our family farm, to get my dad off the road for good.

So I said yes.

The Fowler estate in Lexington was like something from a movie. A massive white mansion sat at the end of a long, winding driveway, surrounded by perfectly manicured lawns and white fences that stretched for miles.

My beat-up pickup truck felt like a piece of trash parked on their pristine gravel.

A housekeeper named Maria, a kind woman with tired eyes, let me in.

"Mr. Fowler is on his way back from a meeting in Louisville," she said, her voice soft. "He asked you to please wait in the sitting room."

I sat on a velvet couch that was probably worth more than my entire house, my hands clasped nervously in my lap. I felt small and out of place, like a stray dog that had wandered into a palace.

The quiet didn't last long.

The door burst open and a young woman stormed in, followed by two others who looked like her clones. She was beautiful, dressed in expensive riding pants and a silk blouse, but her face was twisted with rage.

This was Madisyn Fowler, the patriarch' s daughter. I recognized her from the society pages.

Her eyes locked onto me.

"So you' re the white trash homewrecker."

I stood up, confused. "I... I don' t know what you mean."

"Don' t play dumb with me," she sneered, her voice sharp and cruel. "I saw you with Anthony. My fiancé. Meeting him in secret. You think you can climb your way out of the gutter by latching onto him?"

Anthony Scott. The charismatic executive from her father' s company. He was the one Mr. Fowler sent to meet me, to persuade me to come here.

"No, that' s not what happened," I tried to explain. "Your father sent him. It was about business."

Madisyn laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "Business? What kind of business would my father have with someone like you? Unless it' s the oldest business in the world."

Her friends giggled, their eyes full of contempt.

"Get her," Madisyn ordered.