Where Petals of Vengeance Bloom novel 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.

"I've begged you so much—can't you have just a little pity on me?"

"Pity you?" Claire's voice was icy, the words biting. "Do you even hear yourself?"

She clenched her jaw, every syllable deliberate. "On the night of the auction, Vanessa drugged me. I nearly lost everything. Did any of you pity 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 only did they refuse to defend her, they sided with Vanessa. They accused Claire of making a scene, of trying to frame Vanessa for something she didn't do.

Pushed to the brink, Claire had snapped—tackling Vanessa, pinning her down, raining blows with a heavy glass ashtray.

And after that... Adah's memory faltered, pain draining the life from her body. She slumped to the floor, deflated, unable even to meet Claire's gaze.