Chapter 143 - ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY THREE

Chapter 143: Chapter ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY THREE

DAMIEN

I pressed my broad palm flat against the small swell there and felt my whole world begin to vibrate with a black, demonic rage.

A curve. Barely perceptible to an untrained eye. But there. Definitely fucking there.

No.

Fuck no. It couldn’t be. It fucking couldn’t be.

I ran through the timeline in my head, each calculation feeling like a rusty nail being driven through my eye socket.

How long she’d been with Vincenzo. Fucking months of him touching her, fucking her, pumping his seed into her like he was trying to breed her. The way she’d been sleeping all day lately. Puking up her meals into the toilet when she thought I wasn’t listening. The bone-deep exhaustion. The hypersensitivity.

The math worked.

The math fucking worked.

She was pregnant.

With Vincenzo’s child.

Vincenzo’s seed, growing inside the body that belonged strictly to me. Taking root in the womb that should be carrying my children. My future. My bloodline. Stolen before I could even plant mine inside her.

The jealousy clawed at me, tearing at my insides like razors, and my vision went completely red.

I stood up so fast the heavy bed frame shook, my hands trembling with the violent need to destroy something. To kill something. To wrap my fingers around something soft and squeeze until it stopped breathing.

Not her. Even now with this blasphemy—I couldn’t destroy her completely. She was mine.

But fuck, I needed to break something.

I grabbed the crystal lamp from the bedside table and hurled it across the room with every ounce of fury in my body. It shattered against the wall, glass and electrical wire exploding in all directions like a bomb going off, and Angel jerked awake with a piercing scream.

Her eyes met mine—wild, disoriented, and terrified, blue as a summer sky and full of the kind of primal fear that made my cock throb even now.

She should be fucking terrified.

But I couldn’t deal with her right now. Couldn’t look at her face and think about his filthy kid growing inside her.

I stormed out without a backward glance, slamming the door so hard the heavy oak frame rattled and cracked.

It wasn’t confirmed yet. Maybe I was just mistaken. Maybe the stress of hunting Vincenzo was making me see things that weren’t there.

I dragged in a deep, ragged breath, trying to calm myself. To think through the red haze consuming my brain.

Maybe I was wrong about it?

I was downstairs now, roaring for Ines so loud the chandeliers rattled.

"INES!"

She appeared in seconds, running from the kitchen with wide, worried eyes when I appeared in the hallway like a demon dragged straight up from hell.

"I need a pregnancy test." I barked the words like gunshots. "Get me three of them."

Something moved behind her dark eyes—a subtle flicker that told me she’d already suspected. Already known, maybe, before I did. We’d be discussing her silence later. Right now I needed undeniable proof.

"Now!" I roared when she hesitated for a fraction of a second.

"Yes, Master! Immediately!"

She disappeared out the side door, and I stood alone in my kitchen, pacing like a caged beast, tearing my knuckles raw against the marble island just to feel something other than the scorching jealousy eating me alive.

The tests arrived within twenty-five agonizing minutes.

I snatched the plastic bag from Ines without a single word—pink and white boxes, cheerful colors that felt like a sickening mockery of everything happening inside my skull—and headed back upstairs.

I shoved the bedroom door open. My eyes scanned the empty bed before I heard the sound of gagging and running water coming from the adjoining bathroom.

Angel was standing over the sink, splashing cold water over her pale face, shivering violently. She spun when I walked in, water dripping down her chin and neck, and her wide gaze dropped to the boxes in my hand.

I hurled the boxes at her. They bounced hard off her chest—off those full tits that were swollen with another man’s seed. She caught them in trembling, slick hands.

"Take. The fucking. Tests."

ANGEL

The boxes hit my chest.

One second I’d been standing over the sink feeling utterly nauseous and sorry for myself, the next, Damien was looming in the doorway looking like an absolute demon dragged up from the depths of hell, and pink-and-white boxes were bouncing off my ribs.

I caught them on pure instinct, staring at the bold print on the packaging like they might detonate in my hands.

Pregnancy tests.

My brain completely short-circuited. Everything inside of me stopped moving.

"Take. The fucking. Tests. All of them."

I’d heard Damien angry before. I’d heard him cruel, mocking, whispering sick threats against my bare skin while he was buried inside me. Hell, I’d heard him laugh while I cried and begged for mercy.

But I’d never heard him like this. This wasn’t control. This was something completely unhinged, a frantic, murderous mania that made every survival instinct I had scream at me to jump out the window.

Not that escaping was an option.

His hand shot out like a iron clamp and closed around my upper arm. His thick fingers dug into my flesh so hard I felt my skin bruise in real time, the bone underneath aching.

"Damien—let go! You’re hurting me!"

He yanked me toward the toilet and shoved me down onto the lid. My ass hit the porcelain hard enough to rattle my spine, and before I could even gasp, he was looming over me, blocking out the bathroom light.

"Take them," he snarled, his breath hot and harsh against my forehead. "Now. Before I rip your clothes off and force you."

So I obeyed.

I couldn’t fight him. I couldn’t run. He’d break my legs before I made it three steps, and then he’d really hurt me. At least this way I could buy myself time.

My hands were shaking so violently I could barely tear open the plastic wrapping. The paper instructions fluttered to the floor, but I didn’t bother picking them up—I knew how these things worked. Pee on stick. Wait and watch your entire existence implode.

I did what I needed to do with trembling legs, setting the three tests in a neat row on the edge of the marble sink. And then I sat back on the toilet lid, naked, cold, and shivering, watching those tiny blank windows like they held the verdict of whether I lived or died today.

Damien was pacing back and forth in the narrow bathroom like a rabid animal, I could feel his suffocating fury pressing against my skin, making it almost impossible to draw air into my lungs.

I remember the morning sickness. The bone-deep exhaustion. The sudden sensitivity in my breasts. The missed period I’d tried so hard to convince myself was just stress from being kidnapped again.

Oh God. I can’t be pregnant. I can’t.

That would mean...

That would mean...

Oh God.

"Fuck it!"

Damien’s furious growl cut through my internal spiral like a serrated blade.

He stopped pacing and whirled on me, his grey eyes wild. "You better not have betrayed me, Angel. Tell me you didn’t let him leave something behind in you!"

I didn’t answer; my throat had sealed completely shut with terror. He stormed toward me, his eyes blazing with a sick, desperate madness as his hands slammed onto my shoulders, shaking me.

"You won’t let that bastard do this to us, right? ANSWER ME!" he roared right into my face.