Chapter 165 - ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE

Chapter 165: Chapter ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE

ANGEL

’I’ll love you until he comes.’

I’d whispered those exact words once. In the dark, wrapped in Damien’s suffocating grip, believing them completely. I had actually convinced myself that my love for him had an expiration date I could control—that the second Vincenzo breached the doors, the nightmare would break and I’d be whole again.

No one told me that when the moment actually came, my heart would split violently down the middle. One half dying in the sand beside Damien. The other bleeding out as it reached for Vincenzo.

I was losing both of them.

I was losing myself.

Damien stared down at the diamond band resting in the sand, then up at the blood spreading rapidly across his chest, soaking through his tailored shirt. His storm-grey eyes dragged up, finding mine once again.

And he smiled.

"Okay," he breathed softly, a ragged, bloody sound meant only for me. "Okay, baby girl. I understand now."

He reached into the lining of his jacket—Vincenzo’s men instantly tensed, shouts echoing over the roar of the surf, weapons cocking in unison—and pulled out another handgun. A sleek, snub-nosed revolver he always kept hidden.

CRACK.

Another shot fired from Vincenzo’s direction.

A choked scream tore from my throat as a fresh bloom of red burst across Damien’s chest. Vincenzo was determined to destroy his heart.

Damien staggered backward, his knees buckling, but he forced his body to hold its ground through pure madness. The revolver stayed firmly in his grip.

He didn’t raise it at Vincenzo.

He tossed it across the sand to me.

I caught it, the steel scalding warm from his body heat, heavy and terrifying in my trembling hands.

"Kill me," Damien commanded softly.

His voice was gentle. Devoted, almost. He spoke as if we were back in our bedroom and he was asking me to lie down beside him. Like this was just another dark, twisted game he wanted us to play.

"What...?" I gasped.

"Kill me, Angel." He spread his arms wide, blood dripping from his fingertips, his chest torn open. "You wanted your freedom, didn’t you? You wanted to go back to him. Fine. Here’s your freedom, baby girl. Take it. Pull the trigger. Kill the father of your child!" His voice rose, a sharp, unhinged fever bleeding through every word.

"Damien—please—"

"Because if you don’t—" His smile widened, unspooling into something jagged, beautiful, and completely insane. "—I’m coming back for you. I always come back. Death doesn’t stop me. Bullets don’t stop me. Nothing stops me. There is nowhere on this earth you can run that I won’t track you down. Nowhere you can hide that I won’t drag you out of. I will burn every single thing Vincenzo builds to protect you until there is nothing left but ash and us."

His voice dropped, a lover’s whisper laced with pure possession.

"Do you understand me, little bitch? There is no world where I let you go. Not in this life. Not in the next. You are mine. You will always be mine. So kill me right now—" He took a blood-soaked step toward me, arms wide open, chest leaking crimson, smiling that terrible, beautiful smile. "—or spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, waiting for Daddy to come take back what belongs to him."

My hands shook so violently I could barely keep the steel pointed at him. The weight of the gun felt crushing. The trigger felt miles away.

Do it, my brain screamed. Shoot him. This was the monster who kidnapped me, degraded me, and broke me until I loved my cage. This was the man who stole my entire life.

But he was also the man who held me when I shook. Who pressed his lips to my stomach and whispered secrets to our baby when he thought I was asleep. Who looked at me like I was the only sacred thing in a filthy world.

I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t pull the trigger.

My arms gave out, dropping to my side. The gun hung uselessly in my hand.

Damien’s smile softened into something deeply sad, knowing, and entirely triumphant. Like he’d known all along.

"There she is," he laughed, a wet, bloody sound echoing over the waves. "There’s my good girl. You can’t kill me... because you’re still completely in love with me."

Vincenzo moved.

I didn’t even see him lift his weapon. I only heard the sharp, deafening discharge.

Damien jerked backward, a fresh wound tearing open his shoulder.

CRACK. His thigh.

CRACK. His stomach.

Vincenzo walked forward with intentional strides, firing with every step, his face stripped of anything human. Just pure, sub-zero fury. A father executing the man who corrupted his daughter.

Damien jolted with every impact, but the terrifying smile never left his lips. Blood poured from his body, turning the pristine white sand into a dark, crimson slaughterhouse.

"She still loves me," Damien rasped, glaring straight into Vincenzo’s cold eyes even as his body was shredded piece by piece. "Even now... she couldn’t pull the trigger because she’s mine. You can take her body back, Hale. You can lock her in your house and throw away the key." He let out a wet laugh, blood bubbling over his lips, choking him. "But you’ll never have all of her. Part of her will always stay in that bedroom with me... screaming my name... begging for Daddy—"

Vincenzo’s face twisted into a mask of feral, murderous hatred. Something ancient and terrifying.

He raised his weapon one last time.

Pointed directly between Damien’s eyes.

"Then I’ll just have to live with the rest," Vincenzo said.

He pulled the trigger.

Damien’s head snapped back hard. His body buckled, collapsing onto the sand in agonizing slow motion.

He hit the ground.

And he didn’t move.

For a long moment, the world went dead silent. There was only the sound of the tide washing over the shore, the high-pitched ringing in my ears, and the sight of Damien’s body—broken, ruined, finally still—lying in the sand like a discarded toy.

Then the world exploded.

A deafening blast shattered the silence behind us—part of the main resort structure went up in a ball of fire and black smoke, billowing violently into the blue sky.

A man appeared out of the smoke at Vincenzo’s side, his face covered in soot and blood. "Boss! More of Ricci’s reinforcement are closing in! We have to move NOW!"

Vincenzo turned to me. Slowly, he extended his bloodied hand.

The same hand that used to stroke my hair when I had nightmares. That held mine when the world was too loud. That used to mean safety, warmth, and home.

"It’s over, Angel," he said, his voice dropping into that deep, gentle hum I used to live for. "Come here, baby girl. I’m taking you home."

I stared at his outstretched hand.

Then I looked down at the revolver still clutched in my right fist. Damien’s gun. The weapon he’d given me to earn my freedom. The weapon I couldn’t bring myself to use on him.

But I could use it on the person who ruined everything.

I raised the barrel.

Not at Vincenzo.

I pressed the cold steel flush against my own temple.

"Angel!" Vincenzo’s voice cracked, sharp, harsh, and laced with sudden, hysterical panic. "What the fuck are you doing? Put it down!"

"I ruined it, Daddy," My voice sounded distant, like I was watching myself from across the ocean. "I betrayed you. I fell in love with him. I let him... I let him touch me, and I liked it. I wanted him to keep me..."

"Angel, look at me. Put the gun down right now!"

"I’m filthy," tears spilled hot and fast down my face, washing away the flawless makeup I’d put on for my wedding. "I’m completely broken, Daddy. I can’t go back with you. Not like this. Not when part of me is still... when I’m still—"

I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t confess that part of my heart was currently rotting in the sand beside Damien’s corpse. That even now, surrounded by fire and blood, a sick part of me wanted to lie down next to his body and let the tide wash us both out to sea.

"I can’t be your innocent little girl anymore. I don’t deserve you." My finger tightened over the trigger, the steel biting hard into my skin. "But I’m glad you came for me. I’m glad you’re the last thing I get to look at."

"ANGEL, NO! PLEASE—"

Vincenzo broke into a dead sprint toward me, his face warped in unadulterated horror, reaching out with everything he had.

He was too far away. He was too slow.

"I love you, Daddy," I whispered.

And I pulled the trigger.

CLICK.

BANG.

The gun slipped from my limp fingers, hitting the sand with a soft thud.

My legs gave out completely, my body collapsing as my vision flared black at the edges.

The last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed me whole was Vincenzo’s face—twisted with horror, love, and a grief so profound it didn’t belong in this world—lunging forward to catch my falling body.