Chapter 33 - THIRTY THREE

Chapter 33: Chapter THIRTY THREE

Damien

Dirty. Pretty. Angel.

Three words that had no fucking business existing in the same sentence. But fuck help me, they were the only things left to describe her.

Ruined by me.

I owned every single inch of her. Her body, her mind, and the dark, hollow places in between her thoughts where fear made its home. My back still burned where her nails had dug in—perfect, bleeding crescents etched deep into my flesh.

My bottom lip was swollen, throbbing to the rhythm of my pulse where she’d bitten me earlier. Hard enough that I’d tasted copper on my tongue. Just like she’d done the very first night I dragged her into my bed and took her.

The sting radiated through my jaw with every breath I drew.

I fucking loved it.

I didn’t want the pain to fade. I wanted it to bleed into tomorrow. I wanted to feel her mark carved into my skin the exact same way she felt mine suffocating hers.

The thought was as intoxicating as it was lethal. In my world, I was always the executioner—the one breaking bones, splitting skin, making grown men weep and beg for quick deaths.

But when Angel hurt me?

When she clawed and bit and fought me like a feral, cornered little animal? It made my cock harder than any hit I’d ever put out.

She hated it when I kissed her. Despised it far more than the fucking, more than every other brutal thing I did to her body. I could force my cock down her throat and she’d submit with silent tears tracking down her cheeks. I could pin her wrists, spread her legs, and take whatever I wanted, and eventually, the fight would drain out of her.

But my mouth on hers? That made her lose her fucking mind.

So, naturally, I kissed her constantly.

I craved the taste of her—sweet, clean, and entirely uncorrupted despite the rot I’d dragged her into. The feel of her soft, untouched lips—lips that should’ve been wasted on some useless boy, not pressed against a monster who ran a criminal empire—made me lose control.

I thrived on the feeling of her tongue battling mine, fighting like she was trying to shove me out, trying to reclaim the one scrap of her soul I had no right to claim.

And I especially loved the way her teeth sank into my lip, trying to rip the skin off, desperate to make me bleed the same way I made her. Every single time I stole a kiss, she returned it with pure, unfiltered hatred.

And I craved that hatred like oxygen.

I’d sworn to myself that I wouldn’t stand here and watch her tonight.

Failed, clearly.

She was fast asleep now. Passed out, honestly—left unconscious and trembling after another evening dose of my cock. Her body was at its absolute limit, but I’d taken her anyway because I was a cold, selfish bastard who didn’t give a fuck about limits.

Watching her sleep in my bed had turned into a ritual. A dangerous fucking habit, especially since I’d realized that merely looking at her quieted the demons tearing at the inside of my skull. My insomnia hadn’t hit half as hard lately; she was becoming a drug, and I was getting dangerously addicted to the high.

I hated it. Every time the feeling crept up on me, I fought it back down.

She was Vincenzo’s ultimate weakness—the entire reason that lunatic had gone to war, destroying my shipping ports just to lure me out into the open. He’d hit three of my major shipments, burning millions to the ground.

That crazy fucker had defied the syndicate council, doing the unthinkable by wiping out three of the Syndicate leaders who had appointed me as the organization’s head trainer. He’d slaughtered them gruesomely, burning the rulebook to ash.

He’d made himself public enemy number one to the rest of the Syndicate. Every boss was hunting his head now, but Vincenzo was... like I said. Fucking insane.

He was hunting for me, and he wouldn’t stop until he found us. But I’d never let him get his hands on Angel. Not until she bled out the full payment for her parents’ sins.

I was the one who had suffered the most when the betrayal tore through our ranks. My grandfather, the true head of our family empire, had been brutally murdered by Carlos—Angel’s father—and his men when Carlos sold our classified syndicate intel to our rivals.

Vincenzo hadn’t lost a damn thing in that fallout, which was why he loved playing the fucking holy hero. He was the saintly "Daddy" in Angel’s eyes—a man who could do no wrong.

I’d executed Angel’s parents for revenge. I burned their estate to the ground and put a bullet in Carlos’ head. I would have put an end to Carlos’ entire bloodline that night in my rage, but Vincenzo had stepped in, shielding the little girl. He begged me to stop—not as my leader, but as my friend.

In the end, the council had to make a call. I was the one who quietly campaigned to sell Angel straight into the human trafficking pipeline our Syndicate controlled—the very trade her father had tried to hijack before I put him in the dirt.

We didn’t need the bloody money. I made sure the other bosses saw it for what it really was: a violent, loud lesson to anyone else thinking of treason.

Rules were rules.

Vincenzo might sit in the boss’s chair, but before any binding decree was passed in our Devil’s Runt syndicate, every vote was required. The arrogant fuck thought he’d convinced me to spare Angel all these years. He’d even bound himself to Jillian in a forced marriage just to satisfy her condition for sparing his darling girl.

Forgiveness didn’t run in my bloodline. His precious little Angel belonged to me.

And just to be petty, I planned to make his spoiled, perfect girl hate him just as deeply as she hated me. I was going to break her, corrupt her, and rebuild her until she was more mine than she could ever be his.

I’d already put a temporary leash on Vincenzo’s madness.

A single, silent photograph had been enough to halt the total destruction of my territory.

It was a cold move, given our history, but I didn’t give a fuck after he cost me tens of millions. So I’d sent my former friend a lovely update on his precious little girl: a high-res, perfectly angled shot of Angel, legs spread wide, with my thick cum spilling out of her cunt and dripping down her thighs.

As a loving father, I figured he ought to recognize his daughter’s body.

The message attached was short and clear: Keep tearing up my territory, and your precious daughter gets it worse.

Not that she was ever safe to begin with.