Chapter 122 - ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWO

Chapter 122: Chapter ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWO

ANGEL

He looked confident, like he expected me to obey. And maybe an older instinct he’d trained almost moved. But my devotion to Daddy was greater.

"No, get away from Daddy. I don’t want to kill you too, don’t make me do it, Damien. Get. Away. From. Him. And. Walk. Away." A half insane laugh and half sob escaped my mouth.

"You always ruin things, you should have stayed dead, why did you come back? You and your crazy bitch sister only know how to ruin our lives!" I screamed at him, my chest heaving with exertion. Tears of anger, hate, confusion, fear, all of it streaking down my face.

I just wanted to close my eyes and wake up in Daddy’s arms. Why were these people coming between us.

"You’ll kill me for him?" I saw hurt behind those grey eyes. Real hurt. Damien fired without warning.

Daddy was already moving when the prongs left the barrel. But the taser was faster than instinct.

I fired once.

Missed.

Twice.

Missed.

Fire. Fire. Fire.

Maybe it was my bad luck for missing moving objects or if I’d already used up all my luck in the range. My hands were trembling and the tears were blurring my aim and Damien was fast — the bullet grazed past Damien’s ear as he moved just in time, close enough to draw a thin line of blood along his temple.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Damien fired at Daddy again with the taser and this time, Daddy went down hard, his back hitting the floor, his jaw clenched so tight I could hear the grinding from where I stood. His body locked. Daddy’s eyes were open and blazing with fury but his muscles were no longer his to command.

"DADDY! WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?"

The scream tore from me. I swung the gun toward Damien, this time when I fired, luck was on my side. The bullet caught him straight in his chest.

I waited for him to fall. A second passed. Then two. And three.

Damien didn’t go down. He let out a wince. A grunt of impact. His hand went to his chest, pressed against the spot where the bullet had landed, and came away clean. No blood. No wound.

That was it?

He looked down at his chest. Then back up at me. And smiled.

Was he wearing a bulletproof vest or something?

Shit.

Shit. Shit.

Judging by how much I’d shot so far, I probably had just one more bullet left. One bullet. And the only spot it would do any good was his head, and my hands were trembling so badly I could barely keep the barrel level, let alone aim for a target that small on a man who knew how to move.

One bullet between Daddy’s life and whatever Damien had planned for both of us.

"Tired, baby girl?" He smirked at me, rolling his shoulder where the bullet had hit the vest like he was loosening a stiff muscle after a workout. "Your shooting skill isn’t as good as you spoke. I guess you’re better with your mouth than your fingers,"

"I’m going to kill you!" I screamed at him.

"Then I suggest you do. Next time you miss, baby, I’m going to fry your father’s brains off," The smirk was gone and he looked dead serious. "And I won’t use the taser setting."

My body was shaking with anger, the gun still extended, almost uselessly.

"I told you I’m going to take her while you watched!" Damien snarled at Vincenzo’s body on the ground, victoriously. "Your daughter is mine! I can show you right here, tell me — should I fucking breed her right here while you watch?!" He stared at my naked body in a way that felt like hands crawling over me. Slow. Claiming every inch with his gaze.

"See, Angel? I didn’t kill him like he tried to do me in that explosion. Because I’m not a monster. I know you care about him and have been brainwashed to think I’m the enemy." Damien stared at me calmly, his grey eyes wide and earnest and full of something that looked horrifyingly like sincerity.

"Drop the weapon. Don’t make this difficult." He paused. Tilted his head.

"How about this... You shoot me, but if you miss I kill him for real and you come willingly?"

This was how Damien had always been. The illusion of a choice without giving you one. Every option led to the same destination — him getting what he wanted. The game was rigged before the cards were dealt.

Could I bet everything on one bullet? If I missed... he killed Daddy.

One bullet. One trembling hand. One chance.

If I pulled that trigger and the bullet went wide — even by an inch, even by a breath — Vincenzo died on this floor. And it would be from my failure. My miss.

There would be no difference in that from actually killing Daddy myself.

I met Vincenzo’s gaze through blurry vision. He was still on the floor, still locked in the taser’s fading grip, but his eyes were on me. Dark and burning. And I couldn’t tell if he was telling me to shoot or telling me not to. Telling me to be brave or telling me to survive.

"Clock’s ticking, baby girl." His thumb moved to the selector switch. Rested there. "What’s it going to be?"​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Damien watched me watching Vincenzo. And he smiled. Because he already knew what I was going to decide. My hands lowered an inch. My whole body shaking.

"Good fucking girl." He praised, beaming "I’ve missed you. Do you know that? My whole life hasn’t been the same." His weapon was still aimed at Vincenzo. "I survived the explosion. Badly burned. Weeks in a medical facility. The scar on my jaw—" he touched it briefly "—is nothing compared to what’s under this shirt." His grey eyes held mine. "But the whole time I was healing, every day, every hour, the only thing that kept me breathing was the thought of finding you again."

"Shut up, Damien."

He didn’t.

"Do you remember the last night? Before the explosion. The last night we were together on the island. Do you remember what I said to you?"

I did. The memory surfaced without my permission — sharp, vivid, carrying the weight of everything I’d tried to bury. His voice in the dark. His hand in my hair. The words he’d whispered against my temple that had made me cry because they sounded like everything I’d dreamed of until the next day when the world caught fire.

"I said that I loved you, sweet girl." His voice was barely above a whisper now. The room had gone so quiet I could hear Jillian’s wet sobs and my own heartbeat hammering in my throat. "I meant it, Angel. I still mean it."

The gun in my hand wavered. Just a fraction. Just enough for him to see.

He saw it, a small smile tugged at his face. "Come with me, Angel. Willingly. The way you came to me the first time."

"I didn’t come to you willingly. You took me."

"I took you." He nodded. "And you wanted to stay. You begged me to keep you because you loved me. And you’re going to love me again."

Below him, the taser’s effect was wearing off. I could hear Daddy’s breathing changing — Damien heard it too. His eyes flicked past me to Vincenzo on the floor. And the ease left his face entirely.

"Last chance, Angel. Drop the gun completely. Come with me and I don’t have to kill him,"

The shot came without warning. From above and behind me.

The sound split the room open. My ears rang. And my eyes saw the bloom of red spreading across Daddy’s shirt. Fresh. New. Not from the taser — from a bullet.

Dr. Moreau.

She was standing upstairs, watching us from the balcony above. The gun in both her hands. Her face twisted with fury, the all-consuming rage of a woman watching Jillian bleeding on the ground.

An horrified scream was stuck in my throat.

She fired again. The second bullet hit Daddy’s body and he jerked against the concrete and the sound that left my mouth wasn’t a scream — it was something past screaming. Past language. The sound of a world ending.

"DADDY!"

Moreau swung the gun toward me. I saw it happen in slow motion — the barrel turning, the dark eye of it finding me, her finger on the trigger, her face set with grim determination.

The shot that followed didn’t come from her gun.

It came from Damien’s.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​