Chapter 9
Selene’s POV
Lucien staggered back like I’d stabbed him through the heart: “Selene, Jesus Christ, how can you say something so vicious? You used to be so sweet, so loving with me!”
“Lucien, you’ve been a ruthless bastard in the corporate world for decades–how the fuck are you still this delusional? The Selene who loved you is fucking dead. You murdered her with your own hands. What’s standing here now is someone who hates you more than you could ever comprehend!” The words ripped out of my throat like broken glass.
Lucien’s face crumpled with desperate anguish: “No, no, Selene, please. I was completely out of my mind before, but I see it now–I see how wrong I was. I came here to grovel, to bleed for you, to earn back even a sliver of your forgiveness. Please, just one chance–one last fucking chance–and I swear I’ll spend the rest of my life making this right.”
“Lucien, even if you dropped dead at my feet right now, I still wouldn’t piss on your grave. What kind of psychotic fantasy makes you think there’s anything–anything–you could do to fix what you destroyed?”
Pure rage exploded through me as I grabbed the broom by the door and started beating him with it: “Get the hell off my property! You’re not welcome here! Stop stalking me like some sick freak!”
Lucien didn’t even try to defend himself, just stood there bleeding as I drove him away like the disease–carrying parasite he was.
But I’d seriously underestimated just how completely unhinged he’d become. The psycho actually moved into the local motel and started showing up at my door every single day like some obsessed lunatic.
He seemed hell–bent on recreating every torture I’d endured, putting on these grotesque performances he called “penance.”
The first time, he deliberately set his own arm on fire, stumbling to my gate with flesh hanging off his bones in charred strips, asking through gritted teeth if watching him burn made me feel better.
The sight made me want to vomit. I slammed the door so hard the frame shook.
The second time, he poured a pot of boiling water over his chest right in front of me. Even as his skin
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When Flowers Turn to Fire:Watch Me Bloom,Watch Him Burn
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Chapter 9
blistered and peeled away, he forced a smile and asked if I was satisfied with his suffering.
The third time, he chose the worst storm of the season to kneel outside my gate all night, just like I’d knelt in that burned garden. Rain lashed his face while thunder crashed overhead.
But my heart had frozen into something harder than ice. I didn’t even glance out the window, and had one of my guests dump a bucket of cold ash on him like he was some evil spirit we were trying to exorcise.
The fourth time was when he completely lost his mind. He tried to atone for selling my body by taking a hunting knife and driving it deep into his own groin, screaming as blood poured onto my doorstep.
Through the agony, he gasped: “Selene, I know what I did to you can never be undone. So I’m destroying the part of me that violated you. I’ll never hurt another soul again.”
Watching him writhe in a pool of his own blood, I felt nothing but cold satisfaction: “That diseased thing between your legs was always evil. You should have cut it off years ago. But your self–mutilation means absolutely nothing to me.”
Seeing my complete lack of sympathy, Lucien’s eyes filled with the kind of despair that breaks people completely: “Selene.., God, please, what do I have to do? What do I have to sacrifice for you to forgive me?”
“How many times do I have to spell it out for your worthless brain? I will never, EVER forgive you. Not in this life, not in any life.” I pulled out my phone and dialed his enemies right in front of his bleeding form:
“Lucien Castellan is here dying on my property. He’s too weak to run. Send the FBI–it’s time to
collect him.”
Lucien stared at me with the kind of betrayal that shatters souls: “Selene! You’re the one who leaked
my classified files? You destroyed my empire?”
“You built your fortune on blood money, human trafficking, and murder from day fucking one. All that fake legitimacy doesn’t wash the stench of evil off your hands. I’m doing the world a favor by
putting you where you belong–and getting the revenge you’ve earned.”
My words hit him like bullets to the chest. The life drained from his eyes as he realized the woman he’d loved had become his executioner. But he’d lost too much blood to fight anymore, could only watch in broken silence as federal agents dragged his dying body away in chains.
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Three months later, I heard through the grapevine that Lucien had been beaten to death by inmates who didn’t take kindly to his crimes against women.
I felt absolutely nothing. No satisfaction, no closure, no relief. Just… emptiness.
It was spring by then, and my garden was exploding with vibrant life–purple bluebells dancing in the warm breeze, just like the future I was finally free to build.
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