Chapter 1653: Farm

Gangs, illegal dealings, crimes, violence—if one was surrounded by those things with every breath, every day, one would eventually get used to it. Or perhaps... become numb to it.

That’s what Priscilla called it.

Jason got used to it. And eventually, so did she.

After all, they weren’t good people. They’d made countless selfish decisions, hurt others for their own benefit, and indulged in everything the underworld had to offer.

But the gig they agreed to take—just because it paid more than reselling illegal substances—seemed like a better deal at the time. They were still deep in debt, but not as badly as before.

Had they known how far this would drag them into hell, they wouldn’t have agreed so easily. In fact, they wouldn’t have even considered it. But they did—no longer purely out of desperation, but out of the naive hope that this might make their lives easier.

And it did... for a while. But not for long.

---

[PRESENT TIME]

Priscilla let out a deep sigh, keeping her eyes low. "I know you won’t understand. And if I could go back, I would’ve just accepted Jason’s decision. Maybe... maybe if I had, none of this would have happened."

"His parents wouldn’t have lost the son they raised. Jessa wouldn’t have lost the brother who stood by her through thick and thin." She paused, her lips twisting into a bitter smile. "And maybe... I would’ve met someone else. Someone who would’ve led me down a better path. Someone who wouldn’t leave me without reason... or at least someone who would’ve told me when I was wrong."

She let out a hollow, mocking laugh. "If only... If only I could go back. I wouldn’t—we wouldn’t have had to go through all of that."

"What was the gig?" Penny asked coldly, her tone unmoved by the story she’d just heard. "I understand the feeling of wanting to go back and slap yourself for the things you’ve done. But..."

Even after two lifetimes, this woman hadn’t learned a thing.

Had she been reborn with her memories intact, none of this would have happened. But then again... they wouldn’t have met Nina, Jessa wouldn’t have become Allison’s friend, and the twins—Yugi, especially—wouldn’t be in Prime Group.

This would’ve been an entirely different story.

"...I don’t care about your regrets," Penny continued coldly. "What was the gig you accepted that changed everything? From addiction to drug dealing... just how much worse could it get?"

Priscilla sighed again, glancing at the three in front of her before her eyes drifted back to the past.

"At first, the gig was simple. All we had to do was deliver a package to a certain location and leave it there," she muttered. "After that, we’d get the money they promised us. And the pay that night... it was more than we’d ever earned selling illegal substances."

Even though they’d handled large sums of money before, their profits never came close to what this one gig offered.

"So, after that first payday, we kept agreeing to these odd jobs. Pick up a package, drop it off, get paid. Easy." She huffed. "But by the fifth or sixth request... it changed. It wasn’t just simple pickups and deliveries anymore."

Slowly, she looked up at them and said, her voice hollow, "They wanted us to dispose of some bodies."

The room fell completely silent. Penny and Mint exchanged grim looks.

"And you accepted that? Knowing exactly what you were getting into?" Slater asked, his expression dark. "If they offered you that job, you had to know what it was."

"We didn’t have that privilege," Priscilla said bitterly. "But they did tell us it would be different—that’s why the pay was double. We didn’t know the details, but by then, we were already too deep in the business. We accepted it without thinking twice."

"So... you cleaned up the bodies?" Mint asked quietly, her eyes locked on Priscilla.

Priscilla nodded, her expression tightening.

"We didn’t have a choice," she admitted, wincing as the horrific memories clawed back to the surface. "I won’t pretend to be a saint—or even a good person. But I do have a conscience. We hurt people, exploited them, harassed them... but chopping up—"

She bit her tongue, stopping herself before the gruesome details spilled out. "But cleaning up human remains... or killing people... that was a line we swore never to cross. We might have ordered others beaten, but murder—dismemberment—that wasn’t supposed to be part of our world."

What Priscilla didn’t realize was... somehow, Penny understood.

She, too, had been driven to the brink during her incarceration. In that hell, she’d learned to become the most wicked demon just to survive.

And maybe, just maybe... Mint and Slater understood too. They’d fought and hurt others to survive. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t be standing here now.

Priscilla and Jason’s reasons were twisted and wrong, but in this world, their reasoning wasn’t entirely unfamiliar.

"It wasn’t easy... not at first," Priscilla went on. "And I kept telling him we’d eventually get used to it. But no... it doesn’t get easier. Every time we had to clean up their mess, dissolve those remains, and breathe in the stench of decaying flesh... it was just another weight on his soul."

She stopped again, her mind drifting to Jason’s slow collapse.

"He couldn’t take it anymore. Eventually, he wanted out. We wanted out."

Her voice grew heavier. "But by then, it was too late.

"Turns out, the bodies we’d been dissolving weren’t just random victims. They were people who’d tried to escape from the very organization we worked for—the people who tried to snitch, or run, or expose them to the authorities."

She looked up, her face pale with the weight of that truth.

"All along... we were cleaning up our own future corpses. And the scenes we kept trying to get used to... they were just rehearsals for our own fates. We just didn’t realize it at the time."

Another long silence settled over the room.

"Compared to me, Jason’s mental state had already crumbled," she confessed. "So, when we finally learned the truth, he made a plan to escape.

"But... it didn’t end well. And I had to do what I could to save him."

Her eyes landed on Penny, and her next words were cold and resigned.

"I joined what they called their donors. It’s basically donating my eggs. That’s where it started."