Page 34 of Angel's Forever

The smirk that came over his face sent shivers through my body and touched my very soul. I knew that meant I could expect much of the same as before I left. Only this time, he had no reason not to hit me.

He didn’t say another word as he turned again and walked out of the room, shut the door, and locked it behind him.

Finally alone, I fell onto the bed and started to break down. I had learned a long time ago how to cry without ever being heard, for fear of the repercussions.

I lay there on the bed holding my stomach, trying to convince myself that everything would be okay, but try as I might, I just couldn’t. All I could think of was this was where I would spend my final days. With the monster that I had tried so desperately to escape.

A wave of fatigue came over me again, and I allowed it to take me into a happy place where Vincent didn’t exist. I slowly closed my eyes and imagined my three men here with me. Within minutes, I was asleep with their faces in my dreams.

Chapter Eighteen

VINCENT

I CLOSED THE bedroom door behind me and locked it with the key.

I had done it. She was here where she belonged. I couldn’t believe I had actually gotten away with it.

Seeing what Nikolai had done to Gino, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t survive the night. The blood that was lying around him told me that if he wasn’t already dead, he soon would be.

He had done exactly what I needed him to do and taken out her protection for the day. Grabbing her was easy then, and that was just the way I liked it. When Nikolai told me that she was going to the clinic today, I suspected the reason why. It was always easy to knock her up, and hearing her tell me that she was carrying one of her bastards’ children didn’t surprise me. It did open up an opportunity for me, though.

I’d had everything planned out in my head until those words left her mouth. Now I could cash in on this even more and make them pay both in monetary and emotional ways. My plan had been just to empty Ella’s bank into my own and then slowly torture her until I got bored. Then I would pass her over to Nikolai to deal with. I hated her, but even I couldn’t bring myself to kill a woman carrying an unborn child.

I walked into the living room, grabbed a bottle of bourbon and a glass, and sat down, opening the draw on the side table next to me to grab my stash of cocaine. I was becoming more dependent on this to get through the day. I got out the small mirror tile and laid it on the table next to the bag, blade, and straw I had set out. I knew that every day when I drank and snorted cocaine, I was risking my life, but I couldn’t survive without them.

I poured myself a drink and took a sip. The heat going down my throat, warming my entire body, was a welcome feeling. I laid my head against the back of the couch and recollected the events of the day. Hearing her defiance against me when she tried to get me to let her go brought out a feeling in me that I had long since forgotten from when we first met. It had been the reason why I convinced her to come into a room with me that first night. The challenge of getting this redheaded spitfire to completely submit to me aroused feelings inside me.

I had never been one to like a woman who did exactly what I wanted right from the beginning. I always liked my women to fight back so I could break them and then remodel them into the women I wanted them to be. I had done that with Ella, and things were good. But then she’d gone and fucked things up by falling in love with me and getting pregnant. What the hell had ever possessed her to think I would start a family with a whore like her, I would never know. Because that was all she was: a whore I could pimp out whenever I needed money or my next hit. Mikhail had been more than happy to give me whatever I wanted if she would entertain his men and distinguished guests…and boy, did she do a good job of that.

As soon as she got pregnant, though, things changed. She’d had this “rose-tinted glasses” view of how our life would be. The white picket fence with two-point-five children, and that had never been me. I couldn’t let her go through with it. I couldn’t be tied down with a brat all the time. So I had to do something about it. I knew she wouldn’t have an abortion, so that was why I got high on drugs and drunk. It was the only way I could inflict enough damage on her that she would miscarry the child. I promised myself that I would never do it again, but I enjoyed it. I liked seeing her cower as I treated her badly. It made me want to fuck her more every single time.

That was the issue, though. I did enjoy fucking her. No matter what I said to her about her body repulsing me, it didn’t. I just said that to keep myself sane because every taste I had of her made it more difficult to send her to those men every single weekend to get the money and drugs I needed. Or to pay off a loan I’d taken out to get drugs when she couldn’t perform. She was fucking gorgeous; even now my cock was rock-hard just thinking about bending her over and fucking her ass hard and fast.

I had to stop thinking about her this way, because she would be my undoing. I knew that. I had to remember everything that she had taken from me, and not just the money. It was the status symbol of having a gorgeous whore everyone wanted, and they did.

I had lost count of the number of times that Hudson had messaged me asking me for one night with Angel. I could never let that happen because I knew he wanted her for himself. He just wanted to spend the evening with her to convince her that I was no good. He would have been right, but at the time, she didn’t need to know that. She would learn that after years of abuse at my hands.

They would all pay for what they had done to me, and knowing she was pregnant by one of them just made it all the sweeter. Not only was I going to take the love of their lives away from them, but I would take their unborn child too. I would break them for telling Viktor the truth and cutting off my line of credit and drugs from me. No one would touch me now for fear of what would happen to them, not here or in Detroit. I expected that it would be the same wherever I went. Viktor Koslov’s reputation was wider than just New York.

I placed my glass on the table and opened the bag, emptying the contents onto the mirror before setting up my lines to take. I needed to keep as coherent as I could for the moment, so I would only have one line before dinner. Then, once Ella was asleep, I could finish the packet. I had enough for a couple of days, but I would need to contact Nikolai soon to get some more. At least I still had him at my back. I wouldn’t have known what to do if I lost him. I would probably have gone insane if he couldn’t supply me.

I leaned down and snorted the one line and waited for the high to kick in. The more I used this, the shorter the high was, but right now, I didn’t care about that. I leaned back and rested my head again, allowing the euphoria and adrenaline to course around my body, relishing the feeling. As I lay there, I thought about what I could do to make Ella’s life a misery.

I would make them suffer for a long time. I wasn’t going to make this quick for anyone. I wanted to inflict as much pain and suffering as I could for as long as possible. When I was finished with her, there wouldn’t be a bone that wasn’t broken or an inch of that pearly-white skin without a blemish. Then I would make Hudson and Nico pay by sending then countless pictures of what I was doing to her. Making them wish they had never crossed me. I would also make sure that I was the one to tell them that she had been pregnant with a child by one of them.

All I needed to do was bide my time for a little while. I knew I could convince her that I had changed. I had done it so many times before. Once I had her trust back, I would break it again and again. Eventually, she would plead for death to come, and at that point, I would give her exactly what she wanted.

The high was very quickly leaving my body, and with that, I allowed the sleep I so desperately needed to come.

Chapter Nineteen

HUDSON

WHEN ALEKSANDR CAME to me as I was about to go into the room with Gino, telling me that Viktor wanted to see me, a sudden feeling of dread came over my body.

We all knew who was behind this, and who had Gaby: Vincent. However, without any proof or knowledge of where he was, there wasn’t anything we could do. I had said goodbye to Nico and was currently driving to my office with Aleksandr to meet with Viktor. I had never personally met the guy, but from what Nico had told me in the past, he was a man who could be trusted and had never caused any issues. That alone gave me some comfort. One thing worried me, though: the men he had left behind with Nico and Gino.

“Aleksandr, I hope you don’t mind me asking. Can you trust the men you have left with Nico and Gino? I don’t know how much you know about them, but along with Gaby, they mean the world to me.”