Chapter 112 - ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE

Chapter 112: Chapter ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE

ANGEL

Darkness was all there was at first, thick and heavy, pressing against my eyes like something that wanted inside. My eyes fluttered open groggily, weakly adjusting to my surroundings.

A ceiling first, pale and unremarkable. A lamp on a bedside table, bookshelves against one wall, lined up neatly and orderly, and finally, curtains drawn tight over a window that might have shown me what time it was if I could have seen through them.

A bedroom. I was tied to a bed in someone’s bedroom.

Then the pain came—starting in my wrists where rope bit into raw skin with every breath I took, spreading through my shoulders that had locked up from being held in the same position for too long, settling deep into my jaw where someone had stuffed fabric between my teeth. It tasted like dust and sweat and fear, gagging me, stealing my voice before I even had a chance to use it.

I tried to scream anyway, but the sound died in my throat and all I could do was thrash against whatever was holding me down. The rope burned deeper with every movement. My wrists were slick now with something warm that could have been sweat or blood, and I couldn’t tell which because my whole body had become one continuous scream of sensation.

Where was I? How long had I been out?

The memories crashed back in jagged fragments that cut as they surfaced. The club with its dark hallways and masked faces. Kayla and Lona standing there like ghosts from a life I’d tried to bury. The words that had shattered everything—he’s been back for weeks now—and the realization that had sent me running into the night without thinking. I’d wanted to tell Daddy that he was alive. Damien. The thought made me shudder even now.

I yanked against the restraints again, harder this time, feeling the rope tear fresh lines into my skin. It didn’t give. My ankles were bound too, tied together at the foot of the bed, leaving me pinned and spread and completely helpless.

The door opened.

My head snapped toward the sound, my heart slamming against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my throat and my temples.

Footsteps crossed the threshold, the click of shoes on hardwood echoing through the silence.

A figure stepped into the light, and my mouth fell open behind the gag.

I hadn’t hallucinated that voice. So, the familiarity of it hadn’t been my imagination.

The woman standing in the doorway was different from how I remembered—hair chopped short and uneven like someone had hacked at it with kitchen scissors, her face was gaunt and hollow with her cheekbones jutting too sharply beneath a very pale skin. Like she hadn’t seen sunlight in a while.

Oh, Mother dearest.

She looked like she’d been dragged straight through the burning gates of hell and crawled out the other side—meaner, cheaper, and infinitely uglier.

"Jillian?" The name came out muffled and garbled through the gag jammed in my mouth. How fucking dare this washed-up cunt kidnap me and tie me up like some farm animal?

She stalked toward the bed, her steps slow, jerky, and dripping with cheap malice.

When she reached the edge of the mattress, she stopped, glaring down at me with eyes that had gone completely dark, dead, and rotting.

"Hello, dear daughter. How are you loving it here?"

Rage exploded through my chest.

I thrashed wildly against the ropes, yanking so hard the wooden headboard slammed repeatedly against the wall, a furious scream building in my throat with nowhere to go.

This bitch. This pathetic, dried-up fucking husk who was supposed to be rotting in some back-alley slave den, paying for every single second she’d ever spent breathing the same air as Vincenzo. She was supposed to be suffering under some brutal master’s boot.

She wasn’t supposed to be standing over me like she’d actually accomplished something.

"Tsk, tsk... poor, pathetic little Angel," Jillian murmured, dropping onto the edge of the mattress. The bed dipped under her slight weight, and she watched me exhaust myself against the bonds with those hollow, dead eyes.

"You’re only going to break those pretty wrists," she said, reaching over and yanking the gag from my mouth with a sharp tug that scraped brutally against my teeth and left my jaw aching. "Let’s hear that filthy little mouth now. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?"

"What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you crazy old cunt?" I spat, my voice tight and dripping with pure disgust.

Jillian didn’t even flinch. "I’ve been waiting for this exact moment for a very long time," she whispered, a sickening, unhinged certainty in her tone. "The spiteful little witch who ruined my entire life, finally trapped in my hands."

I stared at her for a beat, and then a mean, taunting laugh burst out of my throat. "Ruined your life? Oh, that is fucking rich coming from you."

"You did!" Her voice spiked, "You ruined everything! My marriage! My home! My entire family! All because of your disgusting existence, I have nothing left!"

"Because of me?" I strained forward against the ropes, my grin turning nasty. "You’re the useless, frigid bitch who couldn’t keep her husband satisfied! Sending me away didn’t make Daddy love you, Jillian. It just made him despise you. You were never enough for him. That’s not my fault—that’s just your own pathetic failure as a woman. Mommy," I hissed, coating the word in absolute malice.

Her dead eyes flared with a sudden, blinding fire of pure venom, and I gave her back a look of complete, arrogant contempt.

"I lost my husband because of you!" she shrieked, "Vincenzo divorced me! He threw me into the gutter like garbage! And then—" Her voice hitched, catching on a sharp breath, and for a split second I saw it—the lingering horror, the gut-wrenching shame, the sickening memory of whatever brutal things had been done to her flesh.