Chapter 141 - ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY ONE

Chapter 141: Chapter ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY ONE

DAMIEN

"You aren’t going to tell me?"

Ines’s hands froze on the gauze she was wrapping around my shoulder. The color drained from her face so fast you’d think I’d already slit her throat.

"Master?"

"I asked you a question."

It was fucking morning now. The first ray of sunlight seeping through the kitchen windows and birds chirp somewhere outside. I had left Angel passed out in my bed an hour ago. I’d used her hard last night. Made her cry. Made her come harder. Then I’d sat in front of the security monitors, watching footage that made my blood run cold and hot at the same time.

My clever little kitten had been busy.

Ines’s throat worked. I could hear her pulse from where I sat—rabbit-fast and scared.

"Do you think I don’t fucking know?" I said and she flinched like I’d cracked a whip. Pretty stupid of her, really. She of all people should know there was a whole CCTV system in every room. I see everything that happens under my roof. Well, almost everything. The bathroom was a blind spot. A mistake I’d be correcting very fucking soon.

I let a smile crawl across my face, "Now I suggest you don’t lie to me before I have to get creative. We don’t want that, do we?"

"No, Master." Her hands were shaking now, gauze trembling against my skin like a leaf in a hurricane.

"I don’t know if it’s anything, Master. But... Angel tried to take my phone. When I was helping her in the bathroom."

"Did she make a call?"

"I checked when I got it back. The history was empty. But—" She hesitated, and my fingers itched with the urge to wrap around her throat and squeeze the rest out. "She was alone with it for several minutes. Maybe that’s long enough to delete something. I can’t be certain what she did."

I already knew all of this. Had watched my girl grab that phone and run to the bathroom. Too bad there weren’t cameras in the bathroom. I didn’t know exactly what happened when she’d been alone. What secrets she’d whispered into that phone. Who she’d begged to come save her from the big bad wolf.

But I had my suspicions. And suspicions, in my world, were close enough to certainty.

She wouldn’t be my Angel if she didn’t have claws. Still scratching at the walls of her cage, looking for weak spots. Fuck, I loved that about her. Made my cock twitch just thinking about all that fire directed at me.

I hated it too. It filled me with distaste that she was wasting energy trying to escape when she should have accepted by now that there was no escape. No rescue coming. No white knight on the horizon.

I was all she had. All she’d ever have.

"Give me the phone."

Ines handed it over like it was a live grenade with the pin already pulled. I turned it in my palm—such a small thing to cause so much trouble. Luckily it was untraceable, no one would be able to track down this device, so my dear little girl had wasted her time for nought.

I pulled out my own phone and dialed Kovacs. He answered before the first ring finished.

"I’m sending you a device. Full forensic recovery. Deleted calls, texts, anything that might have been erased. I want results within the hour."

"Consider it done, Boss."

I hung up and tossed Ines’s phone back to her. She fumbled the catch, nearly dropped it on the tile.

"Get this to Kovacs. Now."

She turned to leave.

"Wait."

She froze mid-step. When she turned back, the terror in her eyes had ripened into something deeper.

"This will be the last time you keep something from me." I held her fidgeting gaze, letting the silence stretch until it screamed. "Next time, I won’t need you anymore."

Her lips trembled. "Yes, Master. Thank you, Master."

I waved my hand—a dismissal, for now. She fled like the devil himself was nipping at her heels.

I poured myself a coffee, black and bitter, and carried it to my study. The waiting was the worst part. I fucking hated waiting.

Half an hour later, a knock sounded at the door. Kovacs.

He walked in with an expression carved from granite. He held Ines’s phone in his hands like evidence at a crime scene.

Which, I supposed, it was.

"What did you find?"

"One deleted call." He handed me the phone, screen glowing, "To this number."

I looked at the number on the screen. I didn’t recognize it—there was no name attached. Just ten little digits that could mean everything or nothing.

But there was only one person Angel would risk everything to call. Only one man she’d cry for, beg for, betray me for.

"Leave."

Kovacs didn’t hesitate. The door clicked shut behind him, and I was alone with the phone and my suspicions and the rage building in my chest like a storm waiting to break.

I stared at the number, my thumb hovering over the call button. I’d been trying to trace Vincenzo with no success—the bastard had covered his tracks well. But if he thought Angel was reaching out for help—

He’d answer. He’d stay on the line. And maybe, just maybe, he’d slip up.

I clicked dial.

It rang once. It didn’t even finish the first ring before someone picked up.

"Angel?"

Vincenzo.

The confirmation hit me like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. He was alive—I’d known that already—but hearing his voice, and the fucking hope in it as he waited for his precious little girl to speak, sent rage tingling through every nerve I possessed. White-hot jealousy that made me want to reach through the phone and rip his throat out with my bare hands.

"Baby girl, is that you? Are you—"

I started laughing. Hell, I couldn’t help it. "Wrong Daddy," I smirked into the empty room.

"Son of a bitch. Where the fuck are you?" He exploded, all that famous control shattering. It was rare to see Vincenzo lose his cool. In all the years I’d known him, he’d always been controlled, like an untouchable wall of ice that nothing could crack.

Oh, my sweet Angel. She certainly knew how to provoke the calm out of a man.

"Well, well, well." I tested the words slowly, settling back in my chair and putting my feet up on the desk because I had all the time in the world and I wanted him to know it. "Expecting someone else, Vincenzo? Perhaps a pretty little blonde with a filthy mouth and the tightest pussy I’ve ever had the pleasure of destroying?"

A dead, volcanic silence followed. I could practically hear his blood pressure spiking through the phone.

"Damien." His voice was all ice now. Pure, cold ice. But underneath it all, I could hear his sanity splintering. "Where is she?"

"Safe and sound in my bed. Well—" I chuckled, letting the sound drip with malice. "Safe might be a stretch. Sound definitely isn’t. She was screaming pretty loudly earlier when I had her bent over and crying. But she’s here. With me. Right where she belongs."

I heard him breathing. Harsh, ragged breaths. I gloated in the moment, savouring every second of the misery I knew he felt. A few months ago I suffered worse shit than him when he’d stolen her from me. Every second he’d been with her was agony—lying in that hospital bed with my skin melting off my bones, knowing he was touching her, fucking her, making her call him Daddy while I clawed my way back from the dead.

Now it was my fucking turn again.

"If you’ve hurt her—"

"Hurt her? Vin, please." I laughed again, mocking, just to twist the knife a little deeper. I wanted him to feel every bit of pain. Where your heart hurt so bad that you could barely fucking breathe. When death was more preferable but you couldn’t afford to die because you wanted her in your arms again.

Yeah. I wanted him to feel all of that.

"It must hurt, doesn’t it?" I took another sip of coffee, "Don’t worry about her though, she loves everything I do to her. You should hear the sounds she makes when I’m balls-deep in that sweet little cunt. The way she whimpers. The way she begs. She cries, you know. But she comes too. Comes so hard she forgets your name."

"You sick fucking— I’m going to find you, and I’m going to kill you, and I’m going to make it last for days."

I laughed, this was the best entertainment I’d had in weeks.

"Funny—I was about to say the same thing about you." I swirled my mug, enjoying myself immensely. "Imagine my surprise when I found out you’d survived. Jillian should have aimed better—four bullets and you’re still breathing? That’s actually impressive. You’re like a fucking cockroach, you know that? Just won’t stay dead. Goodbye Vin."

"We should talk." He spoke fast, desperation bleeding through. "Let’s meet somewhere neutral and discuss terms."