C3, PT. 5 (Patreon)

“You don’t need anyone, Roth. Both times you thought I’d come in handy, only to discover what a liability I am. I’m sure my family will continue to back you without me in the picture.” She was so exhausted, her words began to slur. “I’m sorry you didn’t get your money’s worth.”

“I didn’t mean that, princess.”

She ignored that and, despite everything, felt compelled to remind him, “M-make sure you follow up with everyone you met at the ball and take a look at the business cards I collected. That will take you places even my father never reached. You’ll be set for life.”

“Don’t do this. Please. I’ll do anything.”

He sounded desperate. It was probably the shock of it all. Once it was done, he would realize she’d done him a favor. When her fingers shifted on the gun, he lurched forward with his hand outstretched.

“What about your nieces and nephew?” he demanded.

For a split second, she hesitated. Bailey, Kye, and Polara’s precious faces flashed through her mind. She would never see them age, never see them graduate, or marry… An image of Bailey twirling in a ballroom in a pink tulle dress made her finger lift from the trigger before her attention shifted to the imaginary spectators. Her heart shriveled. Bailey’s debut in society would be ruined by her illegitimate aunt’s background and the man she had divorced twice. If she wasn’t around, the gossip would stop. Tales of the notorious Elena Rogan and Jasmine Hennessy would end here.

“They’ll be better off without me. I don’t want them to know…” She swallowed hard. “And they’ll get Dad’s money, since I named them in my trust.”

“You think money is enough?” he said harshly. “Those kids live for you.”

“They have their parents. They’ll be okay.”

A strange remoteness descended upon her, stifling her emotions so she could think with cold clarity. This was the right thing to do. No more pain and suffering. No more politics, games, lies, pretenses. There was a whooshing sound in her ears as if she were underwater. It would have been pleasant white noise if it wasn’t for the persistent rumble nearby.

Roth was speaking rapidly, urgently. As it had on the jet, his emotions filled the space, anchoring her when all she wanted was to drift into the ether. He hadn’t given up yet. Did he even know how to? He was so stubborn. So angry. So driven. He would never surrender. Never give in, no matter what.

But she wasn’t him. She felt too much. Loved too deeply. All her life she chased love and finally accepted that it would be forever out of reach. The only way to experience it was through her characters, and that was a pale imitation of the real thing. It was cruel to get fleeting tastes of something she would never experience fully.

Her existence had only complicated everyone’s lives. If she hadn’t felt compelled to help Roth at her father’s party, he would have paid his dues and gotten to the top without so much scandal and drama. If Maximus got his wish, and she hadn’t been born, her sister’s lives would be no different. She wasn’t integral to anyone’s life. She was a temporary, replaceable fixture in Roth’s life, and her sisters had each other, their families, and careers. She was on the periphery, drifting aimlessly without any real purpose or direction. Everyone would be fine without her.

“Jasmine!”

Roth’s roar pierced her fog. It took extreme effort for her to focus on him when her mind had already transitioned to another plane.

“You promised me!” he said fiercely.

“Promised what?”

 Her voice was so faint, nearly soundless, but he heard her.

“You promised me in London. You promised you wouldn’t punish yourself again.”

She had a flashback of the promise he extracted from her when she was on all fours in front of his gold elevator in his London penthouse. People are going to hurt you. I’m going to hurt you. But you aren’t allowed to hurt yourself because of it. You understand me?

A tear slid down her cheek. “I guess we both broke our promises.”

He must have heard the finality in her tone because the blood drained from his face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she tucked the muzzle under her chin.

“No!”

His bellow reverberated in her ears as she closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger. Her heart stopped when it didn’t move. What the hell? The trigger was jammed. Dismay cut through her elation.

She opened her eyes and saw Roth running toward her. Frantic fingers slid over wet metal as she tried to find the mechanism that stopped the gun from firing. As her thumb flicked a tiny lever, Roth lunged at her. She jerked back, clumsily aiming the gun at herself as she pulled the trigger. There was a deafening blast and her vision went dark.

All noise cut out, along with all feeling in her body. Was this death? This weightless black emptiness? It wasn’t so bad. And then a searing pain intruded. As her eyelids fluttered, Roth’s face came into view. His lips moved, but she couldn’t hear anything. She was flat on her back beside the tub. She thought death would be instantaneous, but she’d panicked, and now she was probably bleeding out. How long would that take? She closed her eyes, hoping the end was near. Roth applied pressure to her head. Scorching fire edged out the tingling numbness. She wanted to tell him to let her be, but the stubborn jackass always interfered when she didn’t want him to.

She was so cold. She wasn’t sure if it was because she was lying on wet tiles or because death was knocking at her door. She was so goddamn tired. Her eyes were too heavy to keep open.

She drifted on the surface of a cold river, body heavy and unresponsive. She caught snippets of muffled sound. None of it made sense, but when she gathered the strength to open her eyes again, she saw Mo instead of Roth. He had a smear of blood on his jaw. He looked grim, harried, anxious. When their eyes met, she saw his pupils were dilated. Fleeting expressions crossed his face. Shock, alarm, bewilderment, fear. His mouth formed the words, “What have you done?” She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

He was speaking, but she couldn’t focus. It felt like her head was on fire while ice crept through her veins, shutting down her organs one by one. She gasped for breath as an oppressive force began to drag her beneath the cold, black surface. She stopped fighting and let the abyss swallow her.

**This is a raw draft of Bitter Sins. Please do not share or distribute.

Copyright © 2025 Mia Knight. All Rights Reserved.

Author's Note:

So.

This wasn’t in the original draft. In the original, the flashback and the scene on the jet didn’t exist. She just wakes up arriving at the chateau and she goes to the bathroom and has a Meredith Grey moment. IDK how many of you have seen Grey’s Anatomy, but she has this moment where she’s at the bottom of the tub and she’s under so long that her boyfriend gets scared and yanks her up and asks her, “What the hell were you doing?” Jasmine originally had a moment like that with Roth yanking her out and shaking her.

There were several things wrong with this. 1) This was written before I revised Bitter Confessions so the end wasn’t as bad. When I rewrote the book, I made it 3x worse than the original with Warren, Tucker and Roth being total bastards. 2) I was uneasy about Jasmine having a suicide scene. Having her in the tub too long alluded to the direction of her thoughts but didn’t actually go there, which was more comfortable for me & considering my books are already censored and banned on some retailers… 3) After researching, I found out it’s not really possible to drown yourself. 4) In the original snippets, you can see that things just went back to normal with them having a somewhat normal Christmas, etc. That scene didn’t have enough impact to really change their dynamic.

In between Bitter Confessions and this book, I wrote Corrupt Obsession. In that book, I didn’t hold back, so when I came back to the Singed Series, I decided to let Jasmine have her catastrophic breaking point.

This meant basically starting from scratch. The jet scene and chapter 3 were incredibly difficult to piece together because the lead up to her decision had to feel not only plausible, but almost inevitable. I have up to two dozen versions of chapter 2 & 3 and they’re still not set in stone. There’s still a lot of things I want to tweak or nitpick, but I have to get the first draft down and stop harping on small details. Taking this route has been mentally and emotionally taxing, but rewarding in its way because it cuts out a lot of bullshit and causes massive shifts in all of the characters.

This scene changed the whole trajectory of the book and made the original manuscript practically void. That’s fine since I like the direction the book is going, it just delays the release.

Most conversations refer to this scene, which is why I wouldn’t have been able to share future snippets without spoiling anything and why I decided to post the raw draft for context.