All Chapters of THE SCATTERED VOW: Chapter 71 - Chapter 74

CHAPTER 72THE EDGE OF THE ABYSSVivian​My fingers locked around Adrian’s wrist a fraction of a second before his grip completely gave out on the wet stone.​The weight of his body pulled me flat against the rain-slicked balustrade with a violence that knocked the air entirely out of my lungs. The sharp edge of the masonry bit viciously into my ribs, but I didn't care. I couldn't care. I dug my toes into the cracks between the wet floor tiles, my left hand clinging to his forearm while my right squeezed the hard plastic of the master drive so tightly against my ribs that my knuckles burned white.​"Vivian... let go!" Adrian’s voice rose through the roaring wind, strained and hollowed out by exertion. He hung in the open air, four stories above the jagged slate courtyard, his boots kicking uselessly against the sheer, vertical face of the stone wall. "You can't hold me! You'll pull yourself over!"​"Shut up!" I screamed, the rain lashing my face, stinging my eyes until I could barely

CHAPTER 74 THE ASHES OF MERCERVivian​The red LED on the detonator pulsed like a tiny, bleeding heart in Julian’s hand.​I couldn't move. My lungs felt packed with wet sand, every instinct in my body screaming at me to run, to scramble back into the dark, but my limbs refused to obey. The man standing ten feet away had carried me on his shoulders when I was five years old. He had sat at my father’s dinner table every Sunday evening, breaking bread, laughing, drinking dark red wine, and promising my dying mother that he would always keep our family safe.​It was all blood money. It had always been blood money.​"You monster," I rasped, my voice barely a whisper against the low, rhythmic hum of the basement boilers.​Julian didn't flinch. His expression didn't harden into a sneer or twist into rage. That was the most terrifying part of him—the absolute, soul-crushing absence of malice. He looked at me with the detached, mild sympathy of a banker reading a foreclosure notice.​"Monster