Chapter 168 - ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT

Chapter 168: Chapter ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT

ANGEL

The beach house was exactly as I remembered it.

Salt air filled my lungs and waves crashed somewhere in the distance, a rhythmic lullaby that should have been soothing but felt off-key.

I was standing in the living room, the place where Damien had proposed.

How did I get here?

I looked down.

The wedding dress!

I was wearing the wedding dress again, the fabric heavy, dragging against the floor, and pooling around my feet.

I tried to move. My feet wouldn’t cooperate.

"DID YOU REALLY THINK A FEW BULLETS WOULD STOP ME, BABY GIRL?"

My heart stopped.

I knew that voice. Knew it in my bones, in my blood, in the deepest parts of me.

I turned around slowly.

Damien was standing in the doorway.

His grey eyes glinted in the dim light, possessive and utterly unhinged.

My blood ran cold.

"You’re dead," I whispered. "Daddy killed you. I watched you die!"

"Did you?" He cocked his head, curious. Amused. "Are you sure about that, Angel? Are you sure about anything anymore?"

He stepped forward.

Just a step.

I stumbled backwards. I needed to run.

But my feet were sinking.

The floor had turned to sand—no, quicksand—pulling me down, swallowing my ankles, my calves, my knees. I struggled, thrashed, but it only made me sink faster.

"I told you." Damien was walking toward me now, slow and taking his time. "There’s no world where I let you go. Not ever. Not even death. Did you think dying would stop me from loving you? Did you think a few bullets could kill what we have?"

I opened my mouth to scream.

Nothing came out.

My voice had abandoned me, trapped in my throat like a bird in a cage.

He reached me.

Damien crouched down so his face was level with mine, watching me sink with something like delight in his eyes.

His hand cupped my face. Cold. So cold. Like pressing my cheek against a gravestone.

A corpse.

"I’m going to come back, Angel." His thumb traced my cheekbone, tender and terrifying. "I always come back. You know that. You’ve always known that."

"You’re dead," I whispered again, but my voice shook, unconvinced. "You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re—"

"Am I?" He sneered, "Then why can you still feel me?"

His other hand moved to my belly, and he pressed against the swell of our child. "Can’t you feel this? Part of me is inside you right now, Angel. Growing. You’ll never be rid of me. Every time you look at this child, you’ll see my eyes looking back at you. Every time it cries, you’ll hear my voice. Every time it reaches for you—"

He leaned close, his lips brushing my ear.

"—you’ll remember what I did to put it there."

"Stop," I choked. "Please, stop—"

"I’ll never stop." His voice was tender now. Almost loving. "My love doesn’t end. It doesn’t fade or diminish or let go. It just... grows. Like a parasite. It burrows into you and makes a home and never, ever leaves. And when I do return," his teeth grazed my ears, "I’m taking back what’s mine. Both of you."

He bit.

Hard.

Painful.

"No!" The scream left me, "No, you can’t—"

"I can." He pulled back to look at me, and his face was changing. He was fading away slowly, like mist dissolving in sunlight. "I can do anything I want. I always could. That’s what you loved about me, remember? The way I never let anything stop me from getting what I wanted."

His smile was too wide, gleaming in a face that was fading.

"And I want you, Angel. Forever."

I screamed.

I woke up in the hospital room. Again.

White walls. Beeping monitors. The smell of antiseptic instead of salt.

Safe. I was safe.

But my skin was drenched in cold sweat. My breath was ragged, and my hands were shaking so badly I could barely grip the blanket. I could still feel Damien’s cold fingers on my face, his palm pressing against the swell of my belly. The sting of his bite in my ear.

The traces of his cologne lingered in my nostrils. I could feel all of it. Everything. It was suffocating.

Then strong arms wrapped around me.

Warmth.

Another familiar scent—sandalwood and cigars—and a masculine voice rumbled in my ear.

"I’m here. I’ve got you. It’s just a dream, baby girl. Just a dream."

Daddy.

I turned into his chest, burying my face against the fabric of his shirt, breathing him in until Damien’s scent was nothing but a memory.

He pulled me closer, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other rubbing slow circles on my spine.

I pulled back just enough to look up at him. To find his dark eyes.

They were watching me now with an intensity that bordered on obsession.

"He was there," I whispered, my lower lip trembling despite my best efforts to control it. "He said—he said he was coming back—"

"He’s not coming back." Daddy’s arms tightened around me, pulling me flush against his chest. His voice was fierce. Absolute. Leaving no room for doubt. "He’s dead, Angel. I killed him myself."

"But I saw—"

"You saw a nightmare." His hand moved to my hair, stroking gently, working through the tangles with patient fingers. "Your mind is processing what happened. It’s going to take time. But he’s not real. He can’t hurt you anymore."

I melted against him, letting him hold me, his warmth chasing away the cold that Damien had left behind.

I wanted to believe him. I tried so hard to believe him.

But I could still hear Damien’s voice echoing in my skull: ’ I always come back.’

It had been a week and my stupid hand still throbbed.

A constant reminder of my own stupidity. Every time I moved wrong and tried to use it, pain shot up my arm like lightning and I remembered.

I pointed a gun at my own head.

And Daddy shot me to stop it.