All Chapters of Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

VINCENT MOREAU The air was cold as I sprinted to the car. Yet, I had run so fast that each breath hurt my lungs and stomach. So determined I was to find her that I barely felt the pain. I would have only a precious few minutes with her before taking her away, because the last thing I wanted was Damian seeing us together. My eyes swept the looming shadows that ran endlessly into the night, darting between darkened forms that twisted and teased me. I knew for sure that she could not have gone far-not in those fragile shoes, not in her condition. She couldn't have. I had studied her every move for months, taken note of her habits, and seen her hesitations. I knew she had a mind of instinct while not being built for physical endurance. Yet the estate sprawled before me, vast and silent, its neat lawns and looming oaks swallowing any trace of her.I slid into the driver's seat with a sense of urgency, the scented leather creaking under my weight, and brought the engine alive. The vehicl

VINCENT MOREAU And I opened my eyes and woke up from the dream.Perhaps it was a nightmare. It was one, in which I could not locate Eleanor Sinclair.I shut my eyes and relived discovering her after she had run out of the house. It had at first felt eerily impossible, until I took a turn about not more than a block from the house, and there she was, standing beneath a faint streetlight like some old movie heroine.My own foot stamped hard on the brake as my own head wrestled to believe it was her. Her black shining hair shone in the light, a welcome after the darkness that engulfed everything else, and I could even spot from way off the rigidity of her shoulders and the movement of her hands curling and uncurling at her sides. She was coming apart, and it was beautiful to see.I pressed the button to roll down the window, and a blast of cold night air greeted me as I leaned forward, letting my voice adopt that mocking tone of familiarity.Do you need a ride, sweetie?" I asked her, re

ELEANOR SINCLAIR Five years have passed since that time.The days have counted into years that etched themselves into my bones, reshaping me from who I was into something colder, sharper, and far more dangerous than the woman who had stood trembling on that desolate sidewalk, watching helplessly as my world and everything I had known in it came crashing down under Vincent Moreau's cruel smirk. The memory of that night and everything that happened-the bite of the cold, and the suffocating haze of chloroform, were a stamp upon the lies that had torn me from Damian and the life we had managed to build. That memory still clings to me like damp rot. I will not deny the satisfaction I get from knowing that I'm not that Eleanor Sinclair anymore, however. I have forged myself anew, working all of the rage I felt into something more dangerous, a precise, unyielding weapon. Vincent had stolen everything-my husband, my trust, my sense of self... even my child-and I spent a lot of time plotti

ELEANOR SINCLAIR Seeing Damian Blackwood so close sends a jolt of surprise and shock through me.The feeling is a gut-wrenching tug on the strings of a past I've worked so carefully to get past, and my hands tighten around the champagne glass, the chill of the glass a comfort as I freeze, half-hidden from him behind the curtain of velvet. His voice and that apology he gave in passing, is stuck in my mind, and without my mind playing tricks on me, I think it softer than I remember, without the forceful bite that once made him the man he was.The man I knew and loved. The brutal, reckless man. I watch him stride through the crowd, his broad shoulders a little bent and less erect, his step less assured than the man who used to walk into a room-every room he got into-as though he owned it. The Damian I knew had been a fiery storm-capricious, fierce, even cruel. This man before me now is a ghost of that tempest, faded, lost and subdued.I move deeper into the cover of the curtain, my hea

ELEANOR SINCLAIR He leaves, but the show went on in his absence. Around me, the gala pulses with energy, altogether a noisy jumble of clinking glasses and strained laughter from every angle, yet my focus stays laser-sharp on Vincent Moreau. He stands at the top of the grand staircase as an elevated figure would, his charisma a shining beacon of light summoning eyes and murmurs to himself like moths drawn to a flame. I, more than anyone else, it seems, knows how much he can burn.His suit gleams under the chandelier's light despite the matte quality to the material, and his smile-calculated, seemingly predatory-never falters. I know that smile all too well. It is the same one he wears every time he tells his lies, the one I imagine he had on while his plans for my marriage to Damian unfolded, infectious like poison through a vein. So... I need answers. I need to know if Vincent is still pulling strings with so much control, if his influence still lingers in Damian's life, or if he