Chapter 67 - SIXTY SEVEN

Chapter 67: Chapter SIXTY SEVEN

VINCENZO

’Daddy.’

The word echoed through the walls of my bedroom, muffled but unmistakable. A sob. A plea. The desperate cry of a broken girl calling for the man who’d destroyed her.

I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the closed door that separated my room from hers, and felt rage build in my chest like pressure behind a dam. Hot. Violent. Threatening to burst through the control I’d been maintaining.

It had been a week of this. Seven nights of listening to her scream for him.

The torture of hearing her beg ’Daddy’ to come back, to save her, and take her home.

I always lay awake in the dark, heart right with poison while she worshipped the memory of the bastard who’d broken her.

It wasn’t her fault. I knew that.

My little Angel had done nothing wrong. This was all on Damien.

All on the council who’d voted to traffic her like she was cargo. It was also on me for failing to protect her when it mattered most.

But knowing it wasn’t her fault didn’t make it easier to hear another man’s name fall from her lips with such reverence.

I could only imagine what that motherfucker had done to her during those weeks of captivity.

What sick conditioning he’d subjected her to until she couldn’t tell love from abuse anymore.

My little Angel’s wings had been torn right off her back, and she was so thoroughly broken she didn’t even realize she couldn’t fly anymore.

My little girl.

I’d raised her, from the moment I brought her home when she was ten I’d made it my mission to give her everything she’d lost. Safety and stability.

I’d tended to her so carefully over the years and watched her grow from a quiet, wounded thing into something sharp and wild and beautiful.

I didn’t mind spoiling her. Hell, it gave me deep satisfaction to watch her behave as she pleased.

To see her smile when I walked into a room. To know that I was the one who made her happy. To watch her depend on me for everything—approval, affection, emotional comfort.

That dependence had made me feel fulfilled in ways I’d never experienced before. Like I was the center of her universe. Her attention made me feel like I was her whole world, and she was mine.

She’d been so beautiful.

Spoiled. Yet innocent and entirely, completely mine.

How could the council have made that decision? How could they have looked at her and decided she deserved to be punished for crimes committed by her dead parents?

Her parents had been traitors, yes. Her father had been one of the men who’d betrayed the organization, sold secrets to rivals, cost us territory and lives. I knew Damien felt resentment toward them.

His own family had been killed in the fallout from their betrayal. But I’d thought that was settled when Damien put bullets in both their heads. I hadn’t stopped him from carrying out his revenge. Hadn’t interfered when he’d executed them while their daughter had been hidden in a wardrobe

But Angel had been innocent. A child when it all happened. She’d had nothing to do with their crimes, she didn’t even know what her parents were involved in.

So when the council voted to traffic her as punishment for her parents’ sins, I’d fought back.

Jillian had told me the most uncomplicated means without fighting the council directly was to get a higher vote. Override their decision through an easier process rather than violence that would start a war.

I’d thought I had her vote and Damien’s support too, since his revenge against her parents was complete and he had no reason to hurt Angel herself.

I married Jillian under this condition, because it was what she’d demanded in return, I’d done it even knowing fully well that Angel didn’t like her.

That had been my first mistake—trusting Damien. A man whose capacity for cruelty I knew more than anyone else.

My second mistake was letting them know about my plans to send Angel away. To hide her on a different continent until I could secure enough votes to overturn the council’s decision.

Damien had taken her the night before I was supposed to move her. Stolen her right out from under me. Used his inside knowledge of my security to bypass everything I’d put in place to protect her.

I’d done everything to find out where he’d hidden her. Destroyed Damien’s business interests one by one, hoping to force him into making a mistake.

But Damien had always been good at hiding, at covering his tracks and staying ahead of everyone trying to catch him.

He ruined my little girl.

The adoring look Angel used to give me was gone.

Now she looked at me with pure hatred. In her eyes, I was the villain who’d ruined her life.

Maybe I was the villain, for failing to protect her better and find her sooner.

The footage Damien had sent me was still on my laptop, hidden in an encrypted folder I opened more times than I could count.

The video he’d attached to his threat about my continued destruction of his shipping ports. Angel spread out on a bed that was clearly his, her pussy covered with cum—like she was his whore.

I’d watched it more than a hundred times, punishing myself with it.

Forcing myself to see exactly what my failure had cost her. Watching her degradation over and over until the images were burned into my brain where they lived like parasites.

The day I’d taken her from that auction—after I’d burned that entire building to the ground with Damien inside it, after I’d killed every man who’d looked at her with lust in their eyes—I’d been the one to wash her.

I’d stripped her unconscious body naked and placed her in the bathtub. Scrubbed every inch of her skin with my own hands, removing Damien’s taint.

I’d been deceived from the very beginning. Betrayed by a person I’d called a friend for over a decade. And by the woman who was my wife, who’d shared my bed.

Even now, with the entire council dead in that explosion, with Damien’s body burned beyond recognition in the rubble, I still felt furious. Getting rid of the threats to Angel was something I should have done from the beginning.

I should have killed them all the moment they suggested trafficking her.

But now they were all dead. All of them. Nothing could hurt her anymore.

And Jillian—my traitorous wife who’d helped Damien take Angel, was in my own version of hell.

One I’d specially designed for her. One I visited regularly to ensure she was suffering appropriately for her betrayal.

My lips curved slightly at the thought. The smile felt wrong on my face, too cold, too cruel, but I couldn’t help it.

It was a pity Damien never got to know what his sister was going through because of him.

And she would pay for it every single day in ways that would make even his twisted mind uncomfortable.

I just hated that that motherfucker never got to know that I was capable of cruelty that matched his own when someone I loved was threatened.