Chapter 164 - ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FOUR

Chapter 164: Chapter ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FOUR

ANGEL

I didn’t think it would feel like this.

Seeing Daddy.

His face.

His eyes.

The pain in them.

The fury and love all tangled together—everything I’d buried came rushing back like a wave I couldn’t outrun.

He was here.

It had worked.

The final guest I’d whispered to Tianna about. I’d taken the risk in that resort bathroom while Damien’s guard was down, he’d thought it was simply a jealousy confrontation. He never could have guessed that I’d told Tianna to contact that number. I told Tianna that I wanted to surprise my fiancé by inviting an old friend of his and threatened her not to tell Damien about it and ruin the surprise.

I’d done it. Betrayed Damien with a smile on my face and his ring on my finger. I used every scrap of trust he’d given me—this beach trip, and the lowered defenses of a man drunk on love—and I’d weaponized it against him.

But I didn’t expect this.

I didn’t expect to feel like I was being ripped in half.

Vincenzo looked older. Harder. The lines around his eyes were deeper now. His dark hair was shorter, almost military-precise.

But his eyes.

Those dark orbs found mine across the chaos and I saw everything.

Pain.

Relief.

A love so fierce it burned.

He came.

So why did I feel like I was dying?

"What the hell did you do?" Damien’s voice jolted me to reality.

He was returning fire.

Three shots in rapid succession, each one finding a target. Vincenzo’s men dropped, but more poured in behind them. Damien’s men were falling too, hitting the sand one after another.

Damien kept firing until his gun clicked empty. He snarled and hurled it aside, the weapon skittering across the sand.

Then his hand closed around my wrist and yanked me behind him so hard I nearly stumbled, my shoulder wrenching painfully.

His body was between me and Vincenzo.

"Vin, I suppose you aren’t here to give your blessings," Damien’s voice dripped with amusement and a venom he couldn’t conceal.

"I came to take back what’s mine." Vincenzo spoke icily. His expression was frosty, I could feel every ounce of crystalline hatred directed at Damien even from the distance between us.

"Yours?" Damien laughed. "Look at her, Vin. Look at the ring on her finger—my ring! Look at the way she’s trembling right now, and ask yourself: is she trembling because she’s afraid of me, or because she’s afraid you’ll take her away from me? She’s not yours anymore. She hasn’t been yours for a very long time."

Vincenzo’s jaw tightened. "She was never yours to take."

"Maybe not at first." Damien’s thumb traced circles on my wrist—possessive even now, even with death standing twenty feet away. "But she chose to stay. You were going to say yes, weren’t you, baby?"

I couldn’t speak. I stood there, frozen between the two men who’d shaped me into whoever I was now. My tongue was dead in my mouth. My heart was beating so hard I could hear it in my ears.

"You failed her, Vin." Damien’s voice turned cruel, cutting. "That’s the part that eats at you, isn’t it? You were supposed to protect her. You were supposed to be her Daddy. And you failed. I didn’t take her from you—you lost her. I just picked up the pieces you left behind."

"You kidnapped her. Tortured her. Brainwashed her into thinking she loved you—"

"Brainwashed?" Damien threw his head back and laughed, "Is that what helps you sleep at night? The idea that none of it was real?" He yanked me closer, his hand pressing against my belly, against the baby growing inside me. "Does this feel like brainwashing to you? I showed her who she really was. The darkness she was always capable of. You wanted to keep her soft and innocent and dependent on your protection forever. I remade her." Damien’s grip on my wrist tightened until I felt the bones grind together. "Into something magnificent. Something that doesn’t need you anymore."

I watched Vincenzo’s face. The mask of indifference faltered, and for a brief moment, I saw the heartbreak beneath it.

"Tell him, baby." Damien’s voice dropped even lower, soft and intimate, meant for me but loud enough for Vincenzo to hear every word and the madness in it. "Tell him what we have. Tell him you love me."

I was still in a frozen trance. Paralyzed. My brain refusing to function. It was caught between two gravitational forces, each one threatening to tear me apart.

"You want to take her from me, Vin?" Damien sneered, "You’ll have to do it over my dead body."

"That can be arranged."

Vincenzo raised his gun.

A loud bang blasted through the air.

Damien stumbled backward, his grip on me loosening for the first time. I watched wide-eyed as blood bloomed across his shirt like a spreading flower.

But he didn’t fall.

He laughed. "That’s all you’ve got?"

"You’re already a dead man Damien. You can’t be tougher than a bullet, can you? Death awaits you, and this time, you’ll stay dead." Vincenzo’s expression remained cold, mildly amused almost.

Daddy looked at me, and then his lips moved. Just slightly.

A brief smile, but it reminded me of who we used to be. Everything he used to mean to me. I remember it all. All of it.

I yanked against Damien’s grip.

Hard.

Damien’s eyes darted to me. Wild. Deranged. Something unhinged swimming in those grey depths I’d once found beautiful.

"Where do you think you’re going?" He caught my wrist again—bloody now, slick with his own blood, but still impossibly strong. Still holding on. His fingers dug in until I felt the bones grind together. "You don’t get to leave, baby. We talked about this. You promised. You said forever."

"It’s too late, Damien. It’s too late," I whispered, my voice breaking on each word.

"No." His grip turned desperate, his eyes burning into mine with an intensity that scared me more than the blood or the bullets. "No, it’s not too late. It’s never too late. I can fix this. I can kill him. I can kill everyone. And then it’ll just be us again, just you and me and our baby—"

"Damien—"

"Don’t you love me anymore?" His voice shook on the question. The monster was gone, and in his place was something smaller. Vulnerable. "You said you loved me. You said you’d never leave. You promised, Angel. You promised."

I stared at him—this monster, this murderer, this man who’d destroyed my life.

Would you stab me, Angel?

The question echoed in my memory. His voice, soft in the darkness of our bedroom.

I’d kiss your hands while they were still wet with my blood. He’d said to me.

He’d known. Even then, he’d known this moment would come. And he’d already forgiven me for it.

I yanked my hand free. Harder this time, my trembling feet stumbled backwards, sand shifting beneath me.

I looked down at the ring on my finger—the diamond catching the light even surrounded by blood and chaos—and I slid it off slowly. The metal was warm from my skin. It felt heavy. Just like death.

Something in Damien’s face shattered.

I’d seen him angry. Seen him cruel. Seen him tender and loving. But I’d never seen him look like this. Like I’d reached into his chest and ripped out his heart with my bare hands.

"Angel." His voice was a sharp urgent whisper. Destroyed. "Don’t do this to us!"

I stepped backwards.

Away from him.

One step.

Then two.

And three.

I threw the ring to the ground.

The diamond clattered against the sand and I thought to myself, such a small sound for something that was supposed to mean forever. Such a quiet death for something that had consumed us both.