Chapter 151 - ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE

Chapter 151: Chapter ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE

DAMIEN

I caught her before she hit the floor. Instinct. Reflex. Couldn’t let her crack that pretty skull open on the linoleum, could I?

I stood there holding her, looking down at her face. Pale as paper. Tear tracks drying on her cheeks. Lips still swollen and pink from being wrapped around my cock.

She looked ruined. Destroyed. A beautiful wreck that I’d made with my own two hands.

My cock twitched in my pants. Already half-hard again just looking at her.

Down, boy. Not the time.

I carried her to the examination room, shouldering the door open, and laid her on the bed. Her hair fanned across the pillow like a halo. She looked like some kind of angel.

My ruined, broken, perfect little angel.

The rage from earlier was gone. Burned out somewhere between hunting her through the corridors and spilling down her throat. All that was left now was something that felt uncomfortably like disappointment.

"Fuck," I swore, staring at her closed eyes.

What the hell was I supposed to do when she wanted to keep the baby so badly? So badly that she’d do anything for it. She’d made that pretty clear—she’d become whatever I wanted, say whatever I needed to hear, debase herself in ways that should have made me ecstatic.

And it did. Don’t get me wrong. Watching her choke on my cock with tears streaming down her face, begging me to let her keep sucking—that was the stuff of fantasies. My fantasies, specifically.

The look in her eyes. That devoted, desperate, I’ll-do-anything look.

It was too familiar. Something I’d been searching for the entire time—and she gave me a glimpse.

Which was now messing with my head.

I knew what I wanted when I brought her here. Get rid of the pregnancy.

But that look... that look of desperation made me doubt myself. And I hated doubting myself. Doubt was for soft men.

I wasn’t soft. I wasn’t sentimental. I wasn’t stupid.

So why was I hesitating?

I ran my thumb across her lower lip. Still swollen. Still wet. Still tasting like me, probably. The thought made my cock throb again.

Mine.

She was mine.

And the baby—Vincenzo’s fucking baby, growing in my property like a weed in a garden—that was just a complication. A temporary problem with a permanent solution.

But did I want to solve it?

I stared at her stomach beneath the paper gown. I pressed my palm flat against the small swell that was barely visible, barely there. Imagined what was growing inside. A piece of Vincenzo. A reminder that he’d had her too.

The jealousy was hot and acidic, burning through my veins like poison. Like fire—and I knew fire now, knew it intimately, I understood exactly how it felt to have it consume you.

Every time I thought about him touching her, I wanted to break things. Every time I imagined his hands on her skin, his cock inside her, his cum taking root in her womb—I wanted to burn the world down. It made me crazed to find him and kill him slowly, make him watch while I erased every trace of him from her body and her memory. I wanted to fuck her on his corpse until she couldn’t remember what his face looked like.

My hand pressed harder against her stomach. She stirred but didn’t wake.

I could do it. Right now. Tell the doctor to proceed, watch them scrape her empty, hold her hand while she screamed and bled and lost the last piece of Vincenzo she had left.

It would break her. Completely. Irreparably. She’d have nothing left except me.

But I wanted her willing. That was the whole fucking point of all this. I wanted her to come back to me because she wanted to. Because she remembered what we had—the fire, the passion, the way she used to look at me like I was her entire world. The way that fierce little spark in her eyes was directed at me with love and devotion instead of terror.

That’s the Angel I wanted back. My Angel. The sarcastic, sharp-tongued little brat who was as obsessed with me as I was with her. The girl who used to curl up in my lap after I’d fucked her senseless. I needed the version of her used to look at me like I was the center of her universe—because for a while there, I was.

She’s still in there. Somewhere. Buried under all the damage I did, all the damage Vincenzo did.

I just have to dig her out.

And if she won’t come willingly? If she keeps fighting and running and looking at me like I’m the villain in her story?

Then I’ll drag her out myself. Kicking and screaming if I have to. I’ll tear away every wall Vincenzo has built against us until there’s nothing left but the raw, desperate core of her—the part that loved me. The part that still loves me, even if she’s buried it so deep she’s forgotten it exists.

I know her. Better than she knows herself.

Angel is predictable in her unpredictability. She’ll fight and scratch and bite, but underneath all that fire, she’s just a scared little girl who wants to be loved. Who craves someone to hold her and tell her everything is going to be okay.

She’s been that way since Vincenzo adopted her after her parents died and left a hole in her chest that she’s been trying to fill ever since. She craved attention and to feel desired. Angel couldn’t live without that.

I’m going to make myself so essential to her survival that she can’t imagine existing without me.

And it starts today.

Fear is a useful tool, but it can only take you so far. You can’t build a life on terror. At some point, you have to give them something else to hold onto. And I knew damn well what she needed.

I’ll give her comfort when she expects cruelty. Tenderness when she braces for pain. I’ll be the only source of warmth in her cold little world, and she’ll start reaching for me without even realizing it.

Classic conditioning. Pavlov would be proud.

The doctor appeared in the doorway again, looking uncertain.

"Sir? What would you like us to do?"

I looked at Angel’s unconscious form one more time.

"Go ahead with what I told you," I said.

"Yes, sir. I’ll prepare everything."

He disappeared to prepare.

I ran my fingers through her hair, and she stirred closer to me, not waking up.

"I’ve got you, baby girl," I murmured against her hair, pressing a kiss to her temple. "Daddy’s got you. And I’m never letting go."

She’s going to love me again. She’s going to look at me the way she used to, with stars in her eyes and devotion in every breath.

And if she won’t?

We’d keep playing this game in circles, until I got what I wanted.