Chapter 166 - ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX

Chapter 166: Chapter ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX

VINCENZO

She looked like she was sleeping.

That was the lie I fed myself as I sat motionless beside her hospital bed, staring at the gentle, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest. Just sleeping. She was only resting after a long, brutal journey. Any second now, those bright blue eyes would open, she’d smile at me, and the world would begin no spin normally once again.

It was easier than digesting the cold, sickening reality.

The truth was, I had watched my daughter put a loaded revolver to her temple.

I’d had a fraction of a second to make an impossible, agonizing choice—and I hadn’t hesitated. I raised my weapon and fired.

My bullet through her hand, shattering her grip before her finger could pull her own trigger.

Her right hand was heavily bandaged now, wrapped in thick white gauze that looked far too pristine for the violence it concealed. The surgeon assured me the bullet had gone clean through flesh and soft tissue, missing the bones. She’d heal. She’d recover.

She’d be fine.

I repeated those words silently, over and over, like a desperate incantation against the suffocating darkness threatening to swallow me whole.

Because every time I blinked, the image burned against the inside of my eyelids.

Her face, tear-streaked and pale. The heavy steel pressed flush to her skin. Her finger on the trigger, trembling, but entirely resolved to die.

I had failed her so completely that she’d rather blow her own brains out on a beach than face me. Because she thought she was ruined. Because she thought she’d disappointed her Daddy.

And my response? Aiming my piece at my baby girl and pulling the trigger myself.

I shot her.

What kind of monster does that make me?

My hands hadn’t stopped shaking for hours. My entire body vibrated with a volatile mix of relief, rage, grief, and a self-loathing so profound it made my stomach churn.

She was here. She was breathing. That was supposed to be enough.

Only it wasn’t.

The doctor informed me she’d wake up soon. Physically, she was stable—though severely exhausted, dehydrated, and showing symptoms of extreme psychological trauma. The baby was surprisingly healthy, too. I hadn’t asked for granular details, only listening as the physician called it a miracle given the blood loss she’d suffered on the sand.

The baby.

My gaze drifted down to the faint, soft swell of her stomach beneath the thin white blanket. The monster’s seed, blooming inside her. Physical evidence of every single night I had failed to find her. Proof of every time she had been forced to submit to his bed.

I stared at her belly, my jaw clenching so hard my teeth ached.

It doesn’t matter, I swore to myself, forcing the rage down. It doesn’t fucking matter whose blood runs in those veins. This child came from her. That makes it mine. That makes it family.

I would protect this baby. I would raise it, lavish it with everything, and ensure it never, ever knew its biological father was a sadistic parasite who deserved every bullet I drove into his flesh.

She was back under my roof now. That was the only truth that mattered.

My little girl was shattered, but she was alive. And I would spend every remaining breath putting her back together, piece by piece.

If she let me.

If she didn’t despise me for shooting her.

The nightmare of the past few months played on an endless, torturous loop inside my head.

Damien had vanished like a shadow after Jillian abducting her. The bastard ran one of the most sophisticated, ruthless syndicates in the hemisphere, operating from deep within the dark where even my vast networks couldn’t reach.

It had been like hunting a ghost. I was fighting an enemy who tormented me every second I closed my eyes.

I’d torn entire cities apart looking for her. I’d personally tortured men who knew nothing, refusing to believe their ignorance, using their screams to drown out the agony roaring in my own chest. I had gone completely feral with a grief that had no bottom.

My men had started avoiding my eyes. They flinched when I walked down the halls of the estate. I overheard their hushed whispers—how the boss had lost his mind, how I was going to get us all slaughtered, how I wasn’t thinking straight anymore.

They were right.

I hadn’t been sane since the day she was taken.

Then, the call had come.

Her voice, thin and trembling over a burner line. "Daddy?" Just that single word before the line went dead. A few seconds of audio that tore my heart out of my ribs.

She was alive. She was reaching for me.

I threw millions into tracing the signal.

Nothing. A dead end. Damien had permitted her to call just long enough to dangle hope in front of my face before snatching it away. A calculated cruelty designed specifically to break me.

That was the night I truly looked into the abyss.

I had sat alone in my study with an empty glass and my gun resting on the mahogany desk, considering ending the search—ending the pain. What was the point of breathing in a world where I’d failed the only person who gave my life purpose?

I didn’t pull the trigger then. Not because I cared about living, but because somewhere out there, my little girl was breathing. Waiting. And as long as there was a fraction of a chance I could bring her home, I had to stay alive.

I owed her that much. I owed her everything.

Now, Damien was dead.

It was supposed to feel like a triumph.

Instead, it felt hollow.

Because Damien had achieved his ultimate goal in the end. Her hesitation. Her tears. Her utter inability to pull the trigger when he offered her his life.

’...She still loves me.’

Those final, blood-choking words,

The arrogant, knowing smirk on his face would haunt my grave.