Chapter 116

Chapter 116
Chapter 116

Blood Oaths

Tiffany’s POV

The night air cut at my lungs as Alex and I ran, our footsteps pounding against the pavement, echoing like the fading gunshots we had left behind.

The adrenaline in my veins wasn’t the satisfying kind, the thrill of victory, it was sharp, bitter, clawing at the back of my throat like poison.

When we finally reached the car, Alex shoved me inside, his chest heaving, his face set in hard lines of frustration. He slammed the door and rounded the hood, sliding into the driver’s seat. For a moment, the car was filled with nothing but the ragged sound of our breathing.

Then his voice came, low, furious, his knuckles whitening as they gripped the steering wheel.

“What the hell was that, Tiffany? What have you done?”

I didn’t look at him. My hands trembled as I tried to steady them in my lap. “I didn’t expect her father to jump in. I didn't expect her father to give himself up. The bullet was meant for Aurora.”

Alex slammed his fist against the wheel, making me flinch. “You don’t get it, do you? If James dies, Aurora won’t stop. She’ll come for you with everything she has left. You’ve taken her father, Tiffany. The only thing she had left of her family. Do you understand what you’ve unleashed? Do you understand what you have done?”

I lifted my chin, forcing my voice to sound cold, steady, even though my insides churned with dread. “I’m not scared of her. If she wants war, I’ll give her war. I’ll face her with the same intensity that she would bring to me.”

But Alex’s eyes narrowed, reading me the way he always did, seeing past the mask I wore. “Liar.”

The word struck harder than the gunshot I had pulled.

Because deep down, he was right.

I was scared, very scared.

I wasn’t scared of Aurora’s weakness, the timid, broken girl I had tormented for months. No, what terrified me was the possibility that I hadn’t broken her at all. That I had awakened something far darker, far stronger inside her.

And for the first time in a long while, I couldn’t shake the question clawing at my mind:

What if I had just created a monster I couldn’t control?

What if I had broken her to the extent that biting back at me is the only option for her?.
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Aurora’s POV

The mansion was quiet when we returned. Too quiet.

The silence pressed against my ears, heavier than the gunshots, heavier than the doctor’s words. He didn’t survive.

I sat in the living room, my body stiff, my eyes empty, my father’s blood still staining my hands. Dominique had begged me to wash them, to rest, to eat something, anything. Damian had paced the room, trying to draw me into conversation, trying to break the wall I had built around myself.

But I didn’t speak. I didn’t eat. I didn’t move.

I just sat in silence, staring at the ceiling.

Every second stretched into eternity. The house groaned with the weight of my grief. I could hear the echo of my father’s last words, his blessing, his apology, his sacrifice. And the more I heard it, the more something inside me shifted.

I thought the pain would crush me. Instead, it hardened me, building up something inside of me.

Hours must have passed before the numbness cracked. In one motion, I stood, my body trembling but resolute. I crossed the room to the desk, Dominique’s and Damian’s eyes following me in wary silence.

I grabbed a pen. Paper. And I began to write.

The words came like fire spilling from my veins, my hand moving furiously across the page. I didn’t stop, didn’t hesitate. Each stroke carved my grief into vengeance, each line bled the rage that silence couldn’t contain.

When I finished, I folded the paper with steady hands. My chest rose and fell heavily, but my eyes, my eyes burned with something new, something raw.

I turned to Dominique. He stood from the couch, tension etched into every line of his face. He looked at me the way one might look at someone standing at the edge of a cliff, ready to leap.

“Send this to Tiffany,” I said, my voice cold, flat, but laced with venom.

Dominique didn’t move. “Aurora…”

“Send it,” I repeated, stepping closer, shoving the folded paper into his hand. My voice didn’t waver, didn’t break. It was iron. “Tell her I’m coming for her. Tell her I will not rest until her blood spills on the floor.”

The room fell into suffocating silence. Damian’s brows furrowed, his arms crossing over his chest. Dominique’s jaw tightened, his eyes searching mine, looking for the cracks in my resolve.

But there weren’t any.

This wasn’t grief speaking. This wasn’t madness. This was a vow.

Dominique’s throat worked as he swallowed, glancing down at the note in his hand. He hesitated, as though weighing whether to obey or to protect me from myself. But he must have seen it, the fire in my eyes, the unshakable resolve that even he couldn’t douse.

Because finally, he nodded slowly. “If this is what you want…”

“It’s not what I want,” I whispered, my gaze sharp, unyielding. “It’s what has to be done, there is a difference.”

Deep down, I knew Dominique didn’t fully understand what my father’s death had carved into me. He saw the coldness in my tone, the steel in my words, but he didn’t know the depth of the storm rising inside. He didn’t see the way my hands shook not from fear, but from anticipation.

Because Tiffany thought she had broken me.

But all she had done was awaken the part of me I had buried, the part that knew how to survive, how to fight, how to kill if necessary.

She had taken everything from me. And now, I would take everything from her.

Dominique’s voice was careful, steady, but laced with concern. “Aurora… revenge is a dangerous path. Once you step onto it, there’s no going back.”

I met his gaze, my lips curling into something between a smile and a snarl. “Good. Because I don’t plan on going back, from where I came from.”

The fire had been lit already…..

And Tiffany had no idea the storm she had unleashed.

The storm is coming in fast with so much velocity.