Chapter 76 - SEVENTY SIX

Chapter 76: Chapter SEVENTY SIX

ANGEL

Vincenzo watched me. Quiet. Patient. The same way he’d watched me rage and scream and sob for weeks. And when I’d emptied myself out completely—when my chest was heaving and my throat was raw and there was nothing left to throw at him—he spoke.

"My baby girl is so smart," he said softly. His hand came up.

He touched my hair, tucking a strand behind my ear with a gentleness that made my entire body flinch.

"I know you know the truth, Angel. I know you do."

The words landed on me like cool water against a burn. Not soothing—shocking. The kind of cold that makes you gasp before you realize the pain has dimmed.

"I don’t—" I started, but my voice wouldn’t hold.

"Think about it," he said. His eyes held mine, and there was no anger in them. Just a steady, aching patience that was worse than anything he could have screamed at me.

"If I wanted to hurt you—if I’d sent you to that island and traded you to the council—why did I come for you at the auction?"

Every accusation I had died in my throat.

"Why did I kill every man in that building? Why did I burn it to the ground with Damien inside it?" His voice was still gentle. "If I wanted you gone, Angel, I wouldn’t have spent weeks tearing Damien’s empire apart trying to find you. I wouldn’t have started a war with the entire council to carry you out of that building."

My legs were giving out. I felt them weakening, the tremor working its way up from my knees through my thighs.

"I don’t know everything Damien told you about me," Vincenzo said. "I don’t know what lies he used to make you believe I abandoned you. But I have loved you every single day since I brought you home. And even though it’s too late, I fought hard to get you back,"

"Stop." The word came out mangled. "Stop lying—"

"You have always been my little girl." His hand cupped my face. His thumb traced the tears streaming down my cheek. "And I know you’re hurting. I know the world doesn’t make sense right now. But deep down—in the part of you that remembers who I was before all of this—you know I didn’t abandon you."

My body was trembling so hard my teeth chattered. Every barricade I’d built—every wall of rage and denial and cruelty—was shuddering on its foundation.

"You’re lying," I whispered. But there was no conviction left. The words were empty. Reflex.

I sank onto the bed. My legs gave out and I folded inward, my arms wrapping around my own ribcage, trying to physically hold myself together.

The sobs came back with full force.

Because I did know.

Part of me had always known. Especially after the auction—when Vincenzo slaughtered his way through a building full of armed men, burned it to rubble, and carried me to his car. That wasn’t the behaviour of a man who’d sold me off. That was a man who’d torn the world apart to get me back.

But I’d buried it. Drowned it under Damien’s voice, his narrative where he was the saviour who’d rescued me from a father who didn’t want me.

I’d let myself believe it because believing the lie was easier than facing the truth.

The truth was that I loved Damien. Genuinely. Completely.

With every damaged piece of myself. I had called him Daddy and meant it with more devotion than I’d ever given the word before. I had offered him my body and my worship and my absolute surrender, and I had done it willingly—not because I was forced, but because something broken inside me needed to be consumed that completely.

And that meant I had betrayed Vincenzo. My first Daddy. The man who raised me, who sat beside my bed during thunderstorms.

I’d given his title to the man who stole me. Called Damien ’Daddy’ with a reverence I’d never used with Vincenzo, and I’d done it while Vincenzo was out there burning down an empire trying to find me.

But accepting that betrayed Damien too. Because Damien had been my world—twisted, dark, destructive as it was—and admitting Vincenzo was telling the truth meant admitting Damien had lied.

That every whispered ’I love you’ every possessive touch, every ’you’re mine’ had been built on manipulation.

I couldn’t hold both truths at once. I didn’t know how to love them both. I couldn’t mourn one without betraying the other.

And the paradox had been devouring me from the inside for weeks while I fed it rage and cruelty to keep it from swallowing me whole.

"I don’t know what to do," I said. Small. Fractured. "I don’t know what to do, Daddy." The sobs came faster this time. Harder.

He gathered me into his arms. Lifted me onto his lap, settling me against his chest the way he used to when I was small and the world felt too big.

I pressed my face into the curve of his neck and wept into him.

"I still miss him," I whispered. "Even knowing he lied to me. I still miss him."

Vincenzo’s arms tightened. He rocked me slowly, his chin resting on the top of my head, his heartbeat steady against my cheek.

He didn’t tell me to stop crying. Or that my feelings were wrong.

He just held me, letting me grieve the monster I loved while sitting in the arms of the man I’d spent weeks trying to destroy.

"It’s okay, baby girl. You’ll be okay." He murmured into my hair.

I pulled back, just enough to see his face. My vision was blurred, my lashes clumped, my cheeks swollen and raw.

He looked down at me and waited.

"I missed you too," I whispered. Fresh tears spilled hot and fast down my ruined face. "I missed you too, Daddy. So much."

His arms tightened until there was no space left between us, and he pressed his lips to the top of my head and held them there, and I curled into him like I was his daughter again.

And the pink walls of my room didn’t feel like a prison tonight.

They just felt pink.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​