Chapter 118
Chapter 118
Chapter 118
Ashes and Oaths
(Aurora’s POV)
My colourful world blurred into black and white the day they buried my father.
I don’t remember walking into the cemetery, though I know my feet carried me there. I don’t remember the whispers, the cold wind curling around my skin, or the sympathetic hands that tried to touch me. All I remember is seeing the casket.
Dark wood. Silver handles. Too small for a man who had been larger than life in his mistakes, his regrets, his love.
My knees threatened to buckle as I stood before it, but I refused to fall. If I fell now, I’d never rise again, and this is not the time for me to fall, there is too much to be done.
Dominique stood on one side of me, Damian on the other. Peter was there too, making his presence non existent.
They were like Silent sentinels. Protectors. But their presence was only a faint hum compared to the emptiness roaring inside me.
The priest’s words faded in and out, meaningless. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. Words couldn’t mend the hole ripped through my chest.
I stared at that coffin and thought about the way he’d smiled at me through his pain, whispering blessings with blood staining his lips. I thought about how he’d begged me to let him die when all I’d wanted was to not give up on him dieing.
And then I thought about Tiffany.
That bitch.
The gun in her hand. The bullet that should have ended me. The way my father had stepped into its path without hesitation.
Hatred burned so hot in me it scorched the tears from my eyes. I couldn’t cry anymore. My grief had crystallized into something sharper. Something lethal. Something dangerous.
When the dirt began to fall onto the coffin, each dull thud was a hammer driving the vow deeper into my bones.
Dominique’s hand brushed against mine, subtle, grounding. “Aurora…” he murmured softly, like he could feel the storm boiling beneath my skin.
I didn’t answer. My eyes stayed locked on the grave. My lips moved silently, forming words I didn’t even realize until I heard them whisper past my tongue.
“I’ll kill her.”
The words were cold. Final. A promise sealed not with ink but with blood.
Damian’s head turned sharply, his expression unreadable. Dominique tensed beside me, but neither of them spoke. Maybe they knew nothing could stop the path I had chosen.
\---
Back at the mansion, silence wrapped around me like chains.
Everyone moved carefully, afraid to disturb me, as though I were glass already shattered. Dominique tried coaxing me to eat, his voice gentle but firm. Damian sat with me in long silences, his sharp eyes watching, waiting. But none of it mattered.
I shut them out.
I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I barely breathed. I sat at my desk with paper and ink, scribbling furiously, my hand moving faster than my thoughts. Plans. Maps. Words drenched in rage.
Hours bled together. The pages filled with names, with possibilities, with promises. At some point, Dominique entered the room, his tall frame casting a shadow across my work.
He reached out, resting his hand on the paper to stop me. “Aurora, this isn’t what you need right now.”
My head lifted slowly. I met his gaze, and for a moment I thought I saw fear flicker in his blue eyes, it was not fear of me, but fear for what my father's death had turned me into.
“You don’t understand,” I said, my voice steady, eerily calm. “She took him from me. She took my father. And she thinks she’ll get away with it. Dominique, I won’t stop. Not until Tiffany is on the floor in her own blood.”
His jaw tightened. He searched my face as though looking for the girl I used to be. But she wasn’t there anymore. That girl had been buried with James.
I shoved the folded paper into his hands. “Send it to her. Let Tiffany know. Tell her Aurora is coming for her, Tell her I wouldn't stop, no matter where she runs too,I would chase her and find her, I would not rest until her blood spills on the ground.”
Dominique stared at me for a long time, his expression unreadable. Finally, he exhaled and nodded, though his reluctance was palpable.
As he turned to leave, I added softly, “And Dominique?”
He paused, glancing back.
“If you try to stop me, I’ll walk through you too.”
The words hurt me as I said them, but they were true. The fire inside me burned too bright now. Nothing could smother it.
\---
Later, in the quiet of my room, Damian found me.
He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, his shadow long across the floor. “So it’s settled then. Tiffany dies.”
“Yes.” My voice didn’t waver.
He studied me, his sharp gaze dissecting me the way only Damian could. “And what happens after? When the blood dries? When Tiffany is gone and your hands are stained forever?”
“I don’t care.” The answer came instantly. Too fast. But it was the truth.
He stepped closer, crouching so his eyes were level with mine. “You should care, Aurora. Because once you cross this line, there’s no going back. Dominique might forgive you. I won’t judge you. But you’ll never forgive yourself.”
For a moment, I faltered. The storm inside me trembled, threatened to break into sobs. But then I remembered my father’s last smile. His blessing. His blood soaking my hands.
“I’d rather drown in guilt than let Tiffany breathe another day.”
Damian’s lips curved, not quite a smile, but something like respect. He straightened and stepped back. “Then so be it. Just remember… once you spill her blood, you’ll never be the same. None of us will.”
\---
That night, I stood on the balcony of the mansion, the city lights burning like distant stars below me. The wind carried the faintest echo of my father’s voice,his laughter, his regret, his love.
He has been my all in all, after my mother's death, he became the only family I had. But Tiffany took him away from me, just like her family took my mother away from me, she took Alex away from me, but now I'll take the one thing that matter most to her which is……
Her life.
“I’ll make you proud,” I whispered into the night, though tears finally slid down my cheeks. “I’ll finish this, Dad. I promise.”
My fingers curled tightly around the railing until my knuckles turned white.
Tiffany thought she’d broken me. She thought killing my father would be the end of me.
But it wasn’t the end.
It was the beginning of something new.
And I would not rest, not until Tiffany’s empire burned, not until her screams filled the same silence she left me in, not until her blood spilled across the ground as the only fitting requiem for James Thompson.
\---
The next morning, Dominique handed me a phone. A single message had been sent.
Delivered to Tiffany.
You took my father. Now I’m coming for you.
My reflection in the glass caught my eye. I didn’t recognize the woman staring back. She wasn’t the broken girl Tiffany had tied to a chair.
She was something new.
Something deadly.
And Tiffany had no idea what she’d unleashed.