Where Petals of Vengeance Bloom

Chapter 299

Adah shook her head desperately, tears streaming down her face.

"I can't. Please, I don't want to go to a place like that."

"Claire, I'm begging you," she sobbed, her voice breaking. "Just forgive me, just this once-please! If you forgive me, I'll do anything you say. Anything!"

Claire stood there, cold and unmoved, staring at Adah's pitiful pleading. Her lips were pressed together in a hard line, her silence more cutting than words.

The more Claire's expression hardened, the more Adah unraveled. She nearly collapsed at Claire's feet, crawling forward on her knees and reaching out as though Claire were her last hope, the way a drowning woman claws for a lifeline.

She tried to touch her, to embrace her, desperate to show how truly sorry she was. But before her fingers could graze the hem of Claire's coat, Liam seized her arm and yanked her away.

"Claire-!" Adah wailed, her sobs echoing off the walls. Her face was streaked with tears, and she looked utterly broken.

much-can't you have just

Claire's voice was icy, the words biting. "Do

me then?" Adah froze as if struck by lightning. For a moment, she was rigid with shock. A frantic look flickered in her eyes as memories crashed back: that night-she, Nathan, and Ethan-all standing over Claire after she'd been hurt. Not

the brink, Claire had snapped—tackling Vanessa, pinning

her body. She slumped to the floor, deflated, unable even to meet

now, Mrs. Linwood? That night, you smashed an ashtray over my head. The rain was pouring outside, and you threw May out of the house-left her out there,

night and dragged myself out of the Linwood house, I would have died

I just not good

of being decent human beings. I'm not making you suffer the way you made me suffer.

a sledgehammer, pounding on her

over the years came flooding back, slicing her open with a thousand dull knives. The

alone ask for forgiveness.