Curse of Rose de Winter

Chapter 41

I looked at Dylan and I saw Auguste in him.

The fact he had lied for all of the time we were together made me realize he wasn't the Dylan I knew at all. He was a complete stranger.

His eyes were wide as he saw me and he couldn't move. He was stunned to the core that he couldn't trample on more lives for our "happily ever after".

I wouldn't have been happy with you.

"Rose? Since when did you arrive?" he whispered.

"Since the very beginning. It's final, Dylan. You can't trick me anymore."

He shook his head as though crazed. "I wasn't—I didn't do this! I didn't want to do this!"

"You're a criminal," I croaked out. "You've locked Blanche up this whole time! It's been half an year since Auguste's death! Imagine the time she's lost!"

"I know, I'm wrong. I know better than anyone!" he screamed. "But I got myself in deeper and deeper, I couldn't stop anymore!"

"You're Auguste. You're the same as him." I backed away. "Giving me presents, investing in me, the jealousy you had when you knew I was an escort—it makes perfect sense. I'm an item like Blanche to use, to further your fortune and family name.

"No," he denied, but I saw from his face he was lying.

But what face should I put on? I couldn't choose between the disappointment, the sadness, and most of all the denial that I latched on. No, I thought, he wasn't a monster.

"I had loved you," I cried, and Dylan ran forward but me only hovered his hands around mine.

"I still love you. That rainy day I thought you were a ghost, sent to me as a blessing. But you were so warm, you were real. You made me unable to do what I planned to, to cut ties with you and send you away. To marry you off, no, I couldn't accept that!"

"So you destroyed her life? For me?" His figure blurred through my tears but whenever I saw his pained face it pained me too.

"I didn't plan for this! No, it was only to have a substitute until the will was heard—Vaughn followed my plan perfectly and I thought you would leave once it was read, but then there was all the relatives and the—"

He cried, and he wiped his face desperately, "I didn't plan for you to stay so long, to fall in love, and then you chose to marry Leroy. I knew it, I was being punished, but I couldn't clean up my own mess."

"Why did you do this, Dylan?" I looked at the Blanche that now stood up to watch us. "She's innocent!"

"I—I hated my father. Hated everything he liked, and it only made sense. That's why I lost my temper when you said you knew my father!" Dylan admitted.

"You're twisted. You see woman as commodities, we are nothing other than girls labeled as tainted or untainted by your father. You made this curse, you chose to live in it!"

He looked up at me. 

It was such a haunting face. I saw not Auguste in it, but the boy who always came to lay bouquets.

Would he eventually follow Rosemarie into the lake? I wondered all the time. Now his life was hopeless, wouldn't he choose to die? This loneliness we shared were understood by one another, as disgusting as it sounds.

Even now, I saw his next step and choice. I wavered.

"I'll let Blanche free, as well as give her the will she deserves." Dylan stood upright and the immediate change scared me.

He turned to Judy, who immediately nodded. "How much am I entitled to?" She turned to Vaughn. "You're the lawyer, right?"

"You will inherit everything after five years of marriage to a respectable man your father has approved of and listed," Vaughn whispered to her.