Chapter 4
"You really don't have to go to all this trouble. Rodney's always had your back. He does whatever you say," I said.
Gabrielle paused for a moment, her eyes darting to the side as she lowered her voice.
"But no matter what, there's always someone who ends up standing in my way," Gabrielle said.
Her voice was so soft when she said it.
But it sent a chill down my spine.
I suddenly realized something.
Before Alyssa and Gavin, my biological parents, died, they weren't particularly fond of Gabrielle.
At one family gathering, Alyssa even said it right in front of everyone.
"Gabrielle, you and Rodney are both grown up now. You're not kids anymore. He's going to get married and have a family, and you'll marry someone else too. You can't keep clinging to Rodney all the time," Alyssa said.
After that, Alyssa and Gavin died so suddenly, both of them still so young—it just didn't make any sense.
It wasn't that I hadn't been suspicious.
But I had no proof, and I couldn't convince anyone.
Especially Rodney.
I tried to warn him to see reason, but he wouldn't listen.
I demanded he send her away, and he replied in a low voice, "Jenna, don't push it. I get that you don't like Gabrielle, but she's family.
"We grew up together. How could she ever hurt anyone? Anyway, I'm not letting her go."
Rodney never believed me.
Not even after Gabrielle drugged him.
Not even when Alyssa and Gavin's deaths looked sketchy as hell.
He still wouldn't believe me.
He always saw me as making a fuss for no reason, letting my jealousy get the best of me.
In my previous life, after Alyssa and Gavin passed away, Gabrielle confessed her love to Rodney, but he turned her down flat.
Shortly after, a fighter jet crashed while landing due to a sudden malfunction.
The wing snapped off, and the plane burst into flames the moment it hit the ground.
Inside the cockpit, Rodney was seriously injured and slipped into a coma.
Gabrielle was on duty as the flight medic when the crash happened—though she was trapped beneath the plane, she stayed conscious the whole time.
The moment I got the news, I didn't hesitate—I hopped onto a military truck and rushed over as fast as I could.
When I arrived, the doctor came to me, his expression grave. "Ms. Aguirre, we can only save one of them."
Gabrielle gritted her teeth, her voice rising in panic as she cried out, "Save me... I'm not going to make it. Please, save me first!"
I grabbed the doctor, almost yelling, my voice shaking with desperation. "Save Rodney! He's the pilot—he's still alive! I'm begging you, save him first!"
The doctor hesitated for a heartbeat, then spun around and yelled, "Stretcher! Oxygen! Get the monitor, hurry!"
In any situation, the pilot's life took absolute priority.
It was the most basic triage principle, common sense.
Even if it had been me and Rodney trapped together that day.
I wouldn't have thought twice—I'd tell the doctors to save him first, no matter what.
Rodney was rushed into the ambulance.
I couldn't move an inch—Gabrielle, stuck under the twisted wreckage, had eyes that froze me in my tracks.
It was a look packed with despair and a hint of something wild, almost crazed.
Like someone whose deepest wish had just been crushed.
And now, she had made up her mind to pull everyone else down into hell with her.
Then the plane exploded.
Gabrielle died in that accident.
I was the one nobody could forgive after that.
The day Rodney finally woke up from his coma, I saw something in his eyes I had never seen before.
For the first time, there was real hatred in Rodney's eyes when he looked at me.
"Jenna," he said.
"If it weren't for you, Gabrielle would still be alive," he said.
He spent the next fifty years saying those words, unable to let me go.
It wasn't until his final moments, lying on his deathbed, that Rodney finally said, "I wish you had saved her instead."
This time, everything started over.
At the base of Flight Unit 001, someone was quietly asking around about me.
It was Rodney.
He stood off to the side of the training field.
He watched me run lap after lap, his eyes calm and unwavering, never once looking away.
Rodney called out to Antonio, pretending it was just a casual question.
"Is that girl your partner?" Rodney asked.
Antonio grinned. "You mean Daniela? She's the new political officer. We both grew up in the military compound in Elarion."
"What's her name?" Rodney asked.