Chapter 258: Agony

"Nice try, little bird, but you couldn’t possibly damage this thing even if you dropped it on the floor, so be a good girl and hand it over to me."

Damian held out his open palm toward me.

I snapped my gaze away from the guy, felt blindly for the window handle behind my back, and yanked it hard, throwing the sash wide open. Thrusting my hand, clutching the metal container, straight out into the open window, I shook it over the humming abyss of the city below.

"Very well. Then I’ll throw it out!"

I was playing high stakes. Doubts gnawed at me from within, and perhaps I was committing a terrible, fatal mistake right at that moment, but Damian suddenly froze with a predatory, taut expression on his face. His features instantly sharpened like those of a wild beast ready to lunge at me and tear me to pieces at any second.

"Don’t do anything foolish, Hart. Or you will regret it."

"Let my parents go."

"You have no idea what you’re doing or what the consequences will be," he growled in a threatening tone. His voice vibrated with restrained fury, sending sharp shivers crawling across my body.

"You forced me into this yourself! You took my parents, and threatened my life and theirs too!"

"So you decided you could fight me using my own methods?" Damian took another smooth step toward me, while I demonstratively and warningly shifted my grip, making the box feel even heavier in my hand.

"I’ll drop it," I warned hoarsely.

I clearly understood that right then I was cutting off all my avenues of retreat and might regret it like hell. But it was the only thing I could possibly do at that moment. Perhaps another, smarter way out existed, but I simply couldn’t see it. The situation was so terrifying and hopeless that my whole body shook violently with fear.

"What do you want?" the guy asked unexpectedly softly, his tone coaxing as he looked straight into my eyes.

"Let my parents go. I’ll work off my debt just like we agreed, but it is vitally important for me to know they are okay."

Looking at him with desperate hope, I saw him slowly pull his phone from his pocket with one hand while smoothly beckoning me closer with a finger of the other. I took a small, hesitant step toward him and obediently pulled my hand back from the open window.

Damian held the phone tightly to his ear, and suddenly, in the ringing silence of the room, I heard the connection beep on the other end of his line, followed by a distorted, unfamiliar voice.

"It’s me. It’s about the girl’s parents. Kill them."

The moment those terrible, impossible words slipped from his lips into the speaker, everything inside me completely snapped, plunging straight into an abyss. Breaking away, entirely beside myself, I rushed toward him, desperately trying to snatch the phone from his hands.

"No! Don’t you dare! Damian, stop it!"

Slipping into a piercing scream, I began furiously hammering my clenched fists directly against his hard chest. I beat him with all my might, suffocating on choking tears and a rising, uncontrollable hysteria.

The damn container slipped from my weakened fingers, and, carelessly tossing his phone aside, Damian harshly grabbed my trembling shoulders and jerked me toward him, trying to subdue me.

I thrashed wildly, bit, and writhed within his iron grip, screaming so loud that my own ears popped from the sound of my voice.

Damian firmly pinned my thrashing hands with his, and eventually I began blindly kicking him with my legs, striking wherever I could. That reckless resistance likely caused us both to lose our balance and crash onto the floor.

"I hate you! You fucking monster!" I cried right into his face, choking on tears, as he loomed over me with his massive body, ruthlessly pinning my wrists above my head with one hand.

I literally plunged into an uncontrollable frenzy born of shock, overwhelming grief, and black despair. A fire of such destructive force blazed within me that I began to run out of air catastrophically.

From my raging fury and pounding pulse, even the tracker on my wrist grew unnaturally hot and began to crackle and beep annoyingly.

Twisting my entire body and kicking the Alpha once more, I violently jerked sideways, trying to slip out from under him.

"Let me go! Don’t you dare do this!"

"No."

His face was desperately, terrifyingly close. Those dark eyes peered straight into my torn soul, and the instant I opened my mouth to scream my hatred at him again, he ruthlessly captured my lips. He scorched them with a flame of such crushing power that the bitter cold in the room lost all meaning in a single heartbeat, because my own body began to melt beneath him.

And in the very next moment, the world tore apart at the seams. Triggered by a sudden flash of blinding, searing pain in my neck, reality simply ceased to exist.

Unable to hold myself back, I let out a ragged, desperate scream right against his lips. Such hellish, piercing agony tore through the old scar on my neck that my mind began to slip away into blackness, unable to bear the overwhelming torment.

Shifting my blurred, unfocused gaze to the side, I caught a glimpse of the damn white container lying open—completely empty. Yet Damian was fiercely pressing something directly against my throat, applying a ruthless, unyielding pressure.

Heat flooded through my veins like boiling lava, scorching away every thought and feeling in its path, stripping away everything that had once mattered even a little. Suddenly, the world exploded with a chaotic rush of scents—all at once, sending a sharp, blinding ache across the bridge of my nose.

Damian pulled back slightly from my convulsing, shuddering body and hurled some object into the corner, where it shattered against the wall with a loud, ringing crash.

And all that remained was darkness...