Echoes of Vengeance: The Sweet Wife's Perfect Revenge-Chapter 97: My Wife

Aveline didn’t want to panic. She tried to think that Damien might have something to tell her by the way he was taking her upstairs. But ’what ifs’ began haunting her.

Because Damien always went to bed too late or after her, why was he taking her upstairs when he could have spoken with her in the cabana?

The worst came to worst, she would hit him or scream and escape. But she didn’t want to go with him, with zero chances of escape.

She looked at Celeste, "Good night, grandmother."

However, Celeste saw her hand signal, "Aveline, come to my room after helping Damien." She quietly went to her room without bothering to add a fake excuse.

Relieved, "Yes, grandmother." She responded while Damien’s grip on her shoulder tightened before he relaxed.

Damien stepped inside Aveline’s bedroom, where she had grown up most of her years. Her bedroom looked straight out of a fairytale: tall ceilings, arched floor-to-ceiling windows, a balcony filled with varieties of colorful flower pots. The color theme was as elegant as she was.

While it was just a bedroom, he watched her enter her two-floor walk-in closet, a closet of every girl’s dreams.

She came out with a bathrobe and entered the ensuite that was bigger than their bedroom in the Sterling Villa.

Her lifestyle? Now the Laurents had chosen to live a bit modestly, but she had grown up like a princess. Though the Ashford mansion was sprawled across acres, it didn’t hold a candle to this mansion.

He focused his eyes on Aveline when she exited the ensuite. With the throw over her shoulder, he hadn’t noticed before, but now she looked exquisite and tempting in her beige dress.

In the past months, he always got to see her in just loungewear and nightdresses, or else in modest fits while visiting the Ashford mansion. He had assumed her to be boring until he watched on the day of the gala, and now.

"I have kept a new set of toiletries inside. Take a shower and go to bed. I’ll check on my grandmother." She said, and was passing by him when he caught her hand.

She didn’t get time to react when he tugged her. Her back crashed against him while his arms wrapped around her waist, squeezing her close to his chest.

Aveline shuddered, unable to stay composed. Every cell in her body was feeling disgusted, her skin crawling as if insects were marching across it. Her fingers itched to push him away and slap him across the face, but she forced them to remain still.

He had never been physically intimate with her on his own or shown interest before her regression. Thus, she had been confident about returning to Sterling Villa. This act alone was enough to creep her out.

But then his lips landed on her bare shoulder, his tongue licking her skin, leaving a wet kiss.

Her stomach twisted violently, nausea rising to her throat like bile. Her entire body went rigid with disgust; the wet sensation of his saliva on her skin felt like acid burning through her flesh. Her mind screamed in revulsion.

She felt violated, dirty, as if his touch had left invisible stains that would never wash away. Her heart hammered not with desire but with pure terror and disgust.

Before he could kiss her again or cup her breasts, she moved away forcefully. She struggled to act along, but her soft, shaky voice managed, "Get fresh, I’ll be back soon."

However, Damien assumed she was shy. He thought her shiver was her body giving in to his mere touch. Hearing that she would return soon, he didn’t grab her.

No, he wasn’t just there to sleep with her; he was there to put on an act of a husband who couldn’t live without his wife. But she just looked alluring in her dress.

So why not satiate his hunger?

Whereas Aveline only breathed after she locked the door of Celeste’s bedroom. She tried to forget his touch, his lips, his tongue on her skin, but it only made her feel more unbearable. She rushed to the washroom, splashed water, and rubbed her shoulder until it turned red.

Celeste, who had been watching Aveline quietly, removed her warm wrap and covered Aveline’s shoulders.

Aveline tried to relax but grimaced as a tear rolled down her cheek. "He is my husband, yet I feel molested."

Celeste held her granddaughter and gently rubbed her arms, without saying anything, but her heart broke watching her go through something no girl should ever feel.

When Celeste said nothing, Aveline looked at Celeste’s reflection in the mirror, "Am I overreacting?" Because she had had a boyfriend before. It wasn’t the first time she had been in close proximity to a man.

Celeste responded, taking Aveline out of the ensuite. "It doesn’t matter if he’s your husband or a stranger. If your body says no, it’s not overreacting. It’s instinct. Trust it."

Aveline sat down and breathed slowly to ease herself. Despite feeling violated by his touch, by his grab, she couldn’t believe she was still playing the game of deceit.

What was she becoming?

She curled up on the bed, hugging her legs. She wasn’t confident about moving with Damien to Sterling Villa. Here she had run away, how could she keep running away from him in Sterling Villa? If she did it, he would be more suspicious.

She grabbed her mobile and dialed a number. She instructed as soon as the call was answered, "Collapse a wall."

Celeste: "..."

She understood Aveline had dialed Mike Wilson and asked him to collapse a wall in Sterling Villa to avoid moving in anytime soon.

Well, she tugged Aveline’s hand closer to her phone and added, "And a pillar or two." Celeste added, making Aveline smile in resignation. "I don’t like that rat hole."

Now Aveline was speechless. Anyway, she hugged her grandmother and breathed a sigh of relief.

While Damien sat on the bed in a bathrobe, waiting for Aveline, she had dozed off, talking with Celeste.

...

At NexGuard

In the car, Damien was in a foul mood. By the time he had woken up, Aveline had left the mansion. Her morning apology message didn’t quench even a bit of his rage.

His secretary stepped on the accelerator as he informed him, "CEO Lancaster has arrived."

Damien looked at the time on his wristwatch. It was eleven in the morning, and he sneered at Alaric’s careless lifestyle as he shut the laptop.

The security guards ran behind their car as his secretary drove their car right behind Alaric’s car without stopping for a security check.

’Boom.’

Alaric glanced in the rearview mirror at the loud sound of tires bursting. Slamming the brakes, he stepped out of the car just as Damien’s vehicle jerked to a halt behind him.

Damien got out, face twisted in disbelief as he stared at the electronic spike strip embedded in the driveway. The sleek Ferrari beside him now looked crippled.

Alaric leaned casually against his car, arms crossed, expression unreadable except for the faint smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. The kind of smirk that would haunt a man like Damien.

"Spikes in the middle of your damn driveway?" Damien snapped. "Seriously?"

Alaric didn’t flinch. "Were you expecting flowers in my hands?" he said dryly, his voice laced with venom. "After what you pulled?"

Damien’s fists clenched at his sides. Alaric hadn’t answered a single one of his calls. "Mess with me all you want, Alaric Lancaster," he growled, voice low and livid. "But don’t you dare go near my wife."

’My wife?’

Alaric knew that, but hearing it out of Damien’s mouth was like twisting a knife in his gut. He pushed off the car, stepped forward until the space between them was reduced.

"Your wife?" he echoed, his gaze cold as frost. "You say that while you fuck that model of yours."

Damien’s jaw flexed. This was the reason he didn’t want Alaric around Aveline. "That’s none of your business."

"Should I tell her your little secret?" Alaric’s voice was low but lethal. Then he turned and walked toward the NexGuard building, calm as ever.

Damien’s eyes followed him. Not in anger now, but in suspicion.

Alaric never involved women. Then ’Why threaten me with her?’

He replayed the way Aveline had left the room and hadn’t returned.

"She knows something..." he muttered to himself.

And suddenly, it wasn’t about Alaric anymore. It was about Aveline.

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