Chapter 117

Chapter 117
Chapter 117

The Message Delivered

(Tiffany’s POV)

The letter came wrapped in silence, with no warning or alarm,just pure silence.

No messenger announced it. No footsteps betrayed its arrival. It was simply there, laid across the table of the rented safehouse where Alex and I had holed up, as though the shadows themselves had delivered it to us.

A sheet of heavy paper, folded once. The seal was smeared red, not wax but something far more unsettling, blood.

And I know deep down, that the blood simmered there is Aurora's blood.

I froze. My breath caught in my chest, as if the air had thickened into cement.

Alex noticed the shift in my face and turned from the window where he’d been checking the street.
“What is it?”

I didn’t answer at first. My fingers shook as I unfolded the paper. Inside, bold words cut across the page, written in a hand so sharp it looked carved rather than penned.

I will not rest until your blood stains the floor.
You took my father. Now I take everything.

Signed simply: Aurora.

The room tilted. I forced a laugh, brittle, high-pitched, like the sound of glass shattering into piecies.

“Cute,” I said, letting the paper drop to the table as though it meant nothing. “She’s trying to scare me. Pathetic. So pathetic.”

But even as I said it, I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the letters. I’d seen Aurora cry, beg, plead. I’d seen her shake with weakness. But this, this script radiated something else entirely. Not weakness. Not pleading. Not begging.

It reeked of certainty, which made my heart clench.

“She won’t stop,” Alex muttered, his jaw tight. He picked up the note and read it again, slower this time. “Tiff… if James really dies from that shot, you’ve unleashed something you can’t put back in a cage, Are you sure you can handle it?.”

I shot him a glare. “Don’t lecture me.”

“I’m not.” I said, my tone failed the words I spoke.

His eyes flicked toward mine, cold, assessing. “I’m warning you. Aurora’s not the girl we toyed with anymore. Her father dying? That’s going to make her rabid. And she has Dominique at her side.”

Dominique. The Devil. Just hearing his name in Alex’s voice made my skin prickle.

I scoffed and turned away, pretending calm, though my pulse was racing. “Let her come. If she wants war, I’ll face her with the same intensity. She’s nothing compared to me.”

But the words tasted like ash in my mouth.

Because I remembered the look in Aurora’s eyes when her father fell, the sound of her scream ripping through the air, raw and animal.

It was like the cry of something born from the place of pain.

I remembered how Dominique had clutched her like she was already a queen to be protected, not a pawn.

And I remembered, worst of all, the way Aurora’s stare had cut through me in those last seconds before I ran from the chaos.

That was no longer a victim’s stare. It was a predator’s stare.

And right now, I'm like a prey in her eyes.

\---

Night pressed in heavy over the city. Hours slipped by. I tried pacing. Drinking. Distracting myself. But my mind kept circling back to that letter.

Your blood stains the floor.

The words echoed, growing louder each time, until it was all I could hear.

When Alex finally spoke again, his voice startled me.
“You’re shaking, her words are eating you up.”

“I’m not.” I snapped too quickly. My hands betrayed me, trembling where they clutched the edge of the table. I curled them into fists to still them.

Alex leaned back in his chair, studying me with unnerving calm. “You think you’re in control. That’s your problem, Tiffany. You always think you’re pulling the strings. But you didn’t expect her father to throw himself in front of that bullet. You didn’t expect Aurora to still be breathing.”

I spun on him, anger rising because I couldn’t stand the truth in his words. “And what about you? You stood there while I did it. You didn’t stop me. You didn’t blink. You didn't even talk me out of it. ”

He shrugged. “Because I wanted to see what would happen.”

Cold. Detached. That was Alex, always playing his own games.

My throat tightened. I turned away, pretending his indifference didn’t sting. “You think she can really touch me? Aurora’s a child pretending to be dangerous. She’s all bark,with no bite.”

“She was.” His tone sharpened. “Not anymore. Don’t you get it, Tiff? You gave birth to the very monster you’re afraid of, I would still say it again, can you handle the monster you created?.”

His words sank like claws into me. I hated him for saying it. Hated him more for being right.

\---

Hours later, when Alex finally fell asleep in the corner, I sat alone in the dark.

The letter still lay on the table, its blood-red seal catching faint light from the streetlamp outside. I traced the dried smear with my fingertip, my breath uneven.

I told myself I wasn’t afraid. That I would crush Aurora when she came.

But my body betrayed me. Every sound outside made me flinch. Every creak in the floorboards sounded like footsteps. My heart pounded as though it already knew Aurora was coming.

Deep down, where pride couldn’t shield me, the truth spread cold across my chest.

Aurora was no longer the girl tied to a chair, begging for mercy, begging for her to be spared, she's no longer that timid girl I used to bully back at high school.

She had become something else. Something I didn’t understand.

Something that terrified me.

But it was something I had created.

And for the first time since I had taken control of her life, I wondered if the scales had shifted, if perhaps I was the prey now, and Aurora the hunter.

\---

I pressed the letter flat against the table, forcing myself to read it again, word by word, like swallowing poison deliberately.

I will not rest until your blood stains the floor.

The air in the room thickened until I could barely breathe. My reflection stared back at me from the window, eyes wide, haunted, a crack running through the mask I always wore.

I pressed my palms against the glass, leaned close, and whispered to myself, trying to make the words solid, trying to drown out the panic rising in me.

“She wants a war?” My breath fogged the window, trembling. “Then she’ll find me waiting, I would not cower, I am a Peterson and I dont look back from challenges”

But even as I said it, the shadow of doubt curled in my gut, burning my throat.

Because I knew…

Aurora had nothing left to lose.

And people with nothing left to lose are the most dangerous of all.