LOGINShare
ONE GOOD TURN
Last Updated:
2025-03-29 02:51:12
Related chapters
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance THE OLD MAN
ELEANOR SINCLAIR The one thing I would find out quickly was that if this old man's home was the beginning of a path for me, then I could have as well said it was beginning with dogs. He had had enough of them rushing towards us, and two of them bounced around me. I was not the best person with dogs I didn't know, but none seemed intent on harming me, so I tolerated them. “Come in, Eleanor,” he called to me, and I followed him as he entered the house and sat down in it, plopping in the chair. I sat in the one opposite him, my mind aware that I was in a different house from everything I knew. The air smelled faintly of wood polish and dog fur—I even thought I could see the fur moving about in the air, and the furniture looked like it had been collected over decades, with a kind of worn dignity. A look showed me a grandfather clock ticking in the corner, the pendulum swaying with a side-to-side rhythm that my eyes were compelled to follow.When I could draw my mind from the clock, my n
Last Updated : 2025-03-30Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance FIRST DAY AT WORK
ELEANOR SINCLAIR It was as I lay in bed that I realized that I did not know what he would pay.The thought made me sit up in bed, staring into what felt like endless darkness. A sort of modesty held me from wanting to ask, and I decided that I would hold back until the end of the month, when I would decide if the work was worth doing for as long as I could, something I would do until I had a better job, or something I would not do past the month.Before I knew it, I was waking up to the sun.A new day had come.**First, I moved to work in the living room, cleaning, dusting, and wiping while waiting for him to wake up, which he did in an hour, and came to the living room in quite a dazed manner. At first, he froze when he saw me and only moved when I greeted.“Oh, Eleanor. You almost gave this old man a heart attack.” he laughed in a manner peculiar to old people while going to sit on the sofa. “I forgot that I had you for a while, and wondered who was being so confident in my living
Last Updated : 2025-03-31Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance NO USE CRYING OVER SPILT WINE
ELEANOR SINCLAIR It was difficult to pretend not to know Damian Blackwood. Everyone knew, and for people like me who were next to nothing, having to serve such a big shot felt like being sent off earth. My mind recounted all I had heard of him—how there were formal, government officials in Vieuti and how he was the single, unofficial ruling force. He reeked of success, and though I had also heard that he was not averse to killing those who made things difficult for him, he looked so solemn when I saw him that I almost could not believe it. It was even hard to think about. The management had chosen me to serve him because they decided I was the most experienced, but experience mattered less before him.I moved towards his table with the bottle of wine that he ordered—clearly some alcoholic vintage beverage I knew was way out of my class—and I knew I had to be careful with it. All of these things made my palms sweaty as I went even closer to where he sat, and I felt less of myself as
Last Updated : 2025-03-31Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance A YEAR AGO
ELEANOR SINCLAIR The only thing was that his eyebrows furrowed as he looked at me.“Why do you look so familiar?” He asked.“Because I poured some wine on you once, in a restaurant I was serving in. You made a joke out of it and told the manager that you wanted to see me on your next visit. I could say you saved my job with those words, but never allowed for a next visit.” “What restaurant is that?”I told him the name, and he laughed as the memory came rushing into his head.“Oh. I remember you… not exactly your name, but I think I remember the occasion,” he answered in a tone that made it clear that he was not as intent in speaking to me as I was to him. “I can't remember your name, but I did think of it after a while.”“What a miracle. You know each other.”“She knows me.” Damian smiled. “It's beautiful to see her again in any case. Do you still work at the restaurant?”“The funniest thing happened, Damian. Tell him the story, Eleanor.”.“Me?”“Who else? You saved me and deserve
Last Updated : 2025-04-01Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance RUSSIAN ROULETTE
ELEANOR SINCLAIR It was weird when the car came to a stop in front of a warehouse.“I thought we were going on a date?”A smug smile came on his face, and I thought it made him look cocky. It made him handsome too—not that he had ever been ugly, but there were people who had so many outstanding characteristics that drew your attention that you could not focus on any single one of them. That was Damian Blackwood. He was so many things rolled in one that it was almost unfair to simply think of his handsomeness and leave it there. He looked that handsome too, when he burst into a small round of laughter, his eyes taking me in. “I don't go on dates. The only dates I know are the ones marked down on my calendar for my money.”This confirmed it to me. Damian Blackwood was weird.“I did say I was going to show you something though. Come in with me and see.”“It's a warehouse.” I reminded him.Without another word, he opened his car door and went out, leaving me to decide on my next step. I
Last Updated : 2025-04-01Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance FAMILY
ELEANOR SINCLAIR Even though Damian would eventually let the man off with a warning and return me to his grandfather's house without even another word, I remained stuck on that kiss for a long time.It had to be because it was my first ever kiss. Somehow, I had remained untouched despite all the advances ever made towards me, and Damian had violated that. He kissed me without asking permission, and I wanted to be angry with him for doing it and to ask why. The chance to ask this question would not come until a week later when Damian dropped by. He went on and off banter with his grandfather before the latter withdrew for some reason, leaving his grandson alone in the living room with Tiny. I found my chance and dropped inside the room, moving aimlessly inside and waiting to catch his attention. I could say I was mildly disappointed when he did not say a word, but seemed rather focused on the little dog he carried while I cleaned the shelves I had already left shiny that morning. Th
Last Updated : 2025-04-02Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance LOVE IS A DISEASE
DAMIAN BLACKWOOD I wanted Eleanor away because I was in love with her. I had felt this way from the very first time I set eyes on her, and understood when my father declared that ‘love made a man weak’ after that day. Few waiters had poured wine on me, and even fewer had managed to get away with it. I did not care who they were—old, young, male, female—they had paid for it in one way or another until Eleanor Sinclair. Before I knew what was going on, she had walked away scot free and kept her job, all thanks to me.This made me so angry with myself that I resolved to forget about her.Until I saw her with my grandfather, and then kidnapped the man that almost stabbed her with a knife and even planted a kiss on her lips. That had to be the exact moment I knew…Eleanor Sinclair had to go. She had an effect on me that I did not like.How had it even happened in the first place?She was to serve my wine and had somehow tripped, the bottle turning the liquid splashing onto my shirt. I
Last Updated : 2025-04-02Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance TAKE ME HOME
ELEANOR SINCLAIR Even I would not have believed that I would marry Damian Blackwood.But things change so fast that one is forced to wonder what happened. No one talked about him when he wasn't there. It was not that his grandfather did not love him, but the old man had once admitted to me that his grandson was too abrasive for his liking. “Sometimes I wish his mother lived long enough and not died after childbirth. I doubt that she would have let his father raise him that way, as he now belongs to a level of masculinity that makes him less human. Of course, he knows how to show care for his family, but he would need to be more affectionate to be a proper father. His own father was some old, brutish thing.”I wholly agreed with him. Whether he was there or not, his presence could still be felt as something invasive. So no one talked about him when he wasn't around, and me, the old man, and his dogs lived in peace.Well, except for the fact that peace itself got bored of us and chose
Last Updated : 2025-04-03
Latest chapter
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance BLOOD IN THE CITY
VINCENT MOREAU With them, our first big play was a heist.It was not the kind New York was used to, and the target was a man who laundered money for half the city’s elite. His security was top-notch with every kind of security that could be thought of—from biometrics to secure firewalls and armed guards.We were hard pressed to find a weakness to prod, but I figured it out anyway.His arrogance and the number of skeletons he had hidden in his cupboard.It was a game of chance we were playing when Lila breached his system, planting a backdoor that let us steal away $10 million during a crash into his systems. The skeletons in his cupboard, which we determined as his weakness, was the reason why he could not report it without exposing his own dirty deals, and he could only watch as we funneled the funds through shell accounts. The account was soon empty, and he almost went bankrupt.The heist put us on the map, but it also drew angered eyes who could not identify who it was. Everyone s
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance THE TRINITY
VINCENT MOREAU The time then came when the Spider found the web he had cast over Paris a bit too small.Something about the Parisian Mafia felt minor and small scale. Nothing much except bank robberies here and there, and a few drugs being sold about. I thought that if I could play the same game somewhere else, I would be far bigger. So I gathered all that I could and moved to America. In Paris, my network had become intricate, but it was limited as well.It struck me that I wanted more power, and a delicate web spun across petty thieves, small gangs and their occasional rivals was nothing. As far as I was concerned, the city’s underworld had grown stale—or I had rather grown past it—and its opportunities had become too predictable. I wanted to be bigger and better. I wanted to be a legend.In America, with its bawling population and rising powers, I thought I was promised a larger river to cast my net over. The continent called to me like the gold rush—a haven of men with greed and
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance THE SPIDER
VINCENT MOREAU I would earn the name ‘The Spider’ three years after that, when I turned twenty.It was mostly because I learned the one thing my father did not. To kill. The test of the story was because of something I did, something that brought my name to the Parisian slums. One lesson I learned just as early was that people liked smart people. When you did things that would ordinarily not come to their minds, they liked you and lived in admiration of you. For the gangs, they thought I was smart because I knew everything about everybody. I knew who was plotting to kill his boss. I knew who had done something to attract the Police. I knew who was sleeping with who’s woman. I knew who was going to die next.It made me highly covered, indeed, and in danger of death all the time. They would want to sneak up on me and beat what they wanted to know out of me, which was why I had to learn two skills I found extremely important.How to escape, and how to kill. I made money from both.I r
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance ON THE SLUMS OF PARIS
VINCENT MOREAULooking at Damian Blackwood as he told me about the problems that had arisen between himself and his wife, telling me the details just as he had from the very first instance of their saddening scenarios, I knew I would like him.Oh… do I need to introduce myself as Vincent Moreau, his friend?Maybe tell you a little about myself too…Paris is easily one of the most beautiful cities in the world, so they tell me, but it is hard to say it as a Frenchman myself, especially as one born in the densest slums of Paris, where the eyes refuse to see and the air stinks of rot and every shadow hides a blade. It was where I realised that watching my father, Édouard Moreau, was my first lesson, and it showed me how life chewed up hope between those rugged, closely packed houses we lived in. He had been a smuggler without much traction—a small-time criminal that always went chasing the next sourcd of his jobs—cigarettes, booze, fake watches, whatever he could move. For the longest t
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance GOING CRAZY
DAMIAN BLACKWOOD The more I thought about it, the angrier I got with myself.And the more I thought about it, the more I started to despise Eleanor. She was a villain seeking control over me, and I was determined to stop her. The day then came when I found her holding up one of my shirts and inspecting it, her hands trembling. The brown stain on it caught my eye, and we both knew it was dried blood, and it was from a human. “Damian,” she began, the tears already gathering in her eyes so that they sparkled.“What?” I asked, fixing an eye on her. “We talked about this,” she said, in a manner that made it look like I was a child who needed correcting, and not a man who had been escaping death for so long. “We’re going to have children who need to be kept safe—”“Or who will learn how to keep the Blackwood name high, Debbie,” I shot back, stepping closer. “Like me. I killed my first man at fifteen and have lived on the edge ever since. I built everything you see around you with blood.
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance LOSING MY BALLS
DAMIAN BLACKWOOD At first, the world was mine. Then, and all of a sudden, it wasn't.It started with rumours of a plot against me, and from the ones I expected in the least, from the eldest of the three Black grandchildren Victor Black had left in my care when he died. I had allowed them to have the rights to their property piece by piece and as they advanced in age, and cared for them as I would have with my own siblings. Yet, the eldest of them, Wesley, had somehow nursed hatred and resentment for me all that time, even to the point of wanting to take me captive.Someone must have advised him against it, seeing that I would not be easily taken because I soon set a number of spies on him and the influx of information soon changed. He was no longer setting his eyes on me, deeming me too big for him to catch. Next, he set his sights on the one person he thought he could take to get at me. My wife, Eleanor.I prepared well for him, setting a few men to watch over Eleanor, and asking t
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance THE TASTE OF BLOOD
ELEANOR SINCLAIR We moved—myself and the dogs—to the Blackwood home, where I was forced to swallow a bitter truth. I would never get my husband back. He became more distant and started to change after that. It was heartbreaking to watch him go even farther from me, to receive even less attention from him. His kisses became quick and hurried, and our lovemaking became so infrequent that I found myself driven towards the edge of madness.But the climax of everything would come the one evening I found a blood-stained shirt hidden in the laundry basket. It was hidden away, but I found it anyway, and my hands could not remain steady as I held it up, looking at the broken stain in horror. It broke my heart to realise that I was too late. Too late to see him for who he was. To see that he would not change. To see that it was what being a Blackwood meant, to him.At the very moment, he walked in and past me in the most casual way.“Damian,” I called out to him, holding up the shirt so he w
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance EVERYTHING IS WRONG
ELEANOR SINCLAIR That moment was a disappointing one for me. I called the man he wanted me to call, and he soon appeared within minutes. I watched my husband give orders to the men who came with the one I called, and watched as they rushed to do them with a dutifulness that made them almost robotic. From inside the house, the dogs were barking, and the whole place had almost become a bedlam of noise.“John, Davis, both of you take him to the warehouse. I'll soon be there with you.”“Romeo, Julius. Both of you stay and watch my wife. Not a scratch must come to her.”“Tim… go get everything ready.”“Ellie,” he huffed, turning towards me as I stood still, watching everything before my eyes. His shoulders slumped a little bit as he looked at me, and he came towards me and to where I stood. “Romeo and Julius will be watching over you. They are my good men, and will not harm you. You will not even know that they are there, and you will be safe with them.”His voice was low in his throat,
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance SEEING SHADOWS
ELEANOR SINCLAIR Six months later, Damian and I were married.The six months after that? Blissful heaven.Within a year I had gone from Eleanor Sinclair to Eleanor Blackwood, from Miss to Mrs, from unmarried to happily married, from poor to rich. I could swear that I now had all I could have ever dreamed of, but as everything turned positive for me, it went the other way around for Damian.I continued to live in Grandfather's house and as the housemaid, taking care of the place. At times, Damian would come to me there and the other times, I would go to him. Whatever it was, we spent all our nights together. It was our one rule—never going to bed without one of us seeing the other. I kept to this rule of ours faithfully, and so did he. Until the night my husband came to me and felt eerily like the old Damian Blackwood.The grumpy, unfeeling Damian. His face was turned up in a scowl that only lessened when he saw me, and I thought I could wipe it off completely. So I attended to my ma
