Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
ANGELICA
It was too quiet.
That was the first thing I noticed.
The air felt wrong—too still, too clean, like the silence itself had teeth. Gabe stood a few feet ahead, his hand resting on the side of the SUV as he scanned the tree line. Marco hadn’t come back yet. He’d gone to check the perimeter ten minutes ago. Maybe more.
Something scratched at the back of my skull, a whisper that wasn’t a voice, but felt like one.
Move.
“Gabe,” I said, my voice tight, “we shouldn’t be here.”
He looked back at me, brow furrowed. “We’re safe. Just until backup comes.”
But I knew better.
I stepped closer to him, my boots crunching over gravel. The warehouse was long gone. The road behind us was empty. The isolation wasn’t safety—it was separation.
And then I heard it.
The low purr of a high-end engine. Smooth. Expensive. Deadly.
Gabe turned toward it as it crested the rise—sleek, black, windows tinted like obsidian. It didn’t belong here.
It didn’t belong anywhere near us.
“That’s not one of ours,” I whispered.
The car slowed. Stopped.
The rear door opened.
And the world dropped out from under me.
Shadows poured from the vehicle like smoke. Two men stepped out—faces obscured, movements precise. Not Cartel. Not at all. These men didn’t swagger. They didn’t shout.
They owned the silence.
Gabe stepped in front of me. His voice wasn’t loud—but it didn’t need to be.
“Angel…baby. Run.”
It wasn’t a suggestion. It wasn’t a plea.
It was an order. A final act.
There was something in his voice I hadn’t heard before. Steel. Rage. The quiet heartbreak of a boy who’d grown up too fast—and knew this might be the last thing he ever did.
I froze.
For a split second—less than a breath—I couldn’t move.
Not because I didn’t want to.
But because this was the moment. The line between before and after. Between being the girl in the shadows… and the one they were hunting in the light.
The terror hadn’t reached my bones yet. The mind control hadn’t sparked.
I just stood there.
Staring at the brother I had only just begun to understand—and knew, deep in some shattered part of my soul, that he was about to be taken from me.
That second?—
That single, agonizing second—was the last moment I was just me.
And then survival kicked in.
The heartbeat of instinct. The ripple of fight.
I turned and—lunged.
I got five steps before something sharp exploded at the base of my skull.
I hit the ground hard. Gravel tore into my palms. Sharp. Burning.
My elbows cracked against stone.
The air punched out of my lungs before I could scream.
Hands—rough, cold—clamped around my ankles. My wrists.
Dragging.
Dust filled my mouth. The sting of blood.
NO!
The scream rose too late.
I kicked. Hard. Fighting like an animal.
My boot connected with flesh. A grunt.
I twisted. Bit down. Screaming.
The taste of sweat. Salt. Skin.
A curse—sharp and furious—in Spanish.
Then a crack across my cheek.
My head whipped to the side.
Strands of hair lashed my cheek before the burn came.
Searing.
Scorching .
White light.
My vision dazed.
But I didn’t stop.
Couldn’t.
Wouldn’t.
Not until I saw him.
A sound broke through.
Faint. Distant.
Gabe.
His voice—shredded with fury. My name torn from his throat like it was the only thing keeping him alive.
“Angel!”
The scream cracked the silence like shattering glass.
I flinched, my body seizing. My head snapped toward the sound.
My vision blurred—tears, blood, the sting of the hit.
But I saw him.
For one breathless second—I saw him still fighting.
Still reaching.
Then—
Nothing .
Hands clamped around my arms again.
Rough. Heavy.
Fingers like steel digging into the flesh of my biceps.
I screamed, thrashed, my boots scraping against gravel as they dragged me backward—toward the car.
The sleek black blur of it loomed closer. The rear door yawning open like a mouth.
“No—no, let me go!”
My heel caught on the edge of the pavement. I kicked back—caught one of them in the shin.
A grunt. Another curse.
The second man grabbed my legs. Lifted.
I was weightless for a moment—fighting air, panic clawing its way up my throat.
Then they slammed me down.
My spine hit leather.
The door slammed shut behind me.
Dark.
Hot.
Hands still on me. The press of bodies. The stench of sweat and smoke.
And then?—
The voice.
A whisper, low and velvet-smooth against my ear.
“Hello, Angel…”
They shoved me inside the car like I weighed nothing.
The leather seat was hard underneath me, knees scraping the edge, my body collapsing sideways. The door slammed shut behind me with a sound that felt final—like a lid sealing a coffin.
Darkness pressed in. Not just the absence of light, but something heavier. Thicker. Breathing.
Then I saw him.
Penn.
He was seated across from me, spine straight but hollowed out like something vital had been scooped from his chest. His lip was split, one eye swelling shut.
He didn’t speak.
Didn’t move.
And when his gaze finally met mine—it wasn’t relief or guilt.
It was shame.
Shame so deep it made my stomach twist.
“Sorry, Angelica,” he said, voice rough. “They made me do it.”
The words sliced through me.
No.
No.
I scrambled back, my foot catching on the floor mat as panic crushed my ribs from the inside. I reached for the door handle, blind with terror?—
A hand caught me from behind.
Cold. Dry. Iron.
It slammed over my mouth as the scream built inside, killing the sound cold.
And then I felt him.
Behind me. Around me.
Him.
The monster in my head. He was real.
He was here.
His breath brushed my ear. Slow. Intimate. Poison.
“Go still, little flame…”
The words didn’t just touch me. They pierced me.
My muscles froze. My heart thundered once—twice—then slowed to something dull and dragging.
I could hear the blood moving in my veins. Could feel the shift behind my eyes.
The command dug in. Burrowed deep.
My body betrayed me.
My arms fell limp. My mouth went slack beneath the hand that still held me in place.
Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes, but I didn’t blink.
Couldn’t.
And through the rear window—blurred and smeared with blood—I saw Gabe.
Fighting.
Bleeding.
Ripping through one of the masked men like a fucking wolf.
Trying to get to me .
Screaming my name.
Another man came up behind him and slammed something against his skull. Gabe dropped. Hard.
Everything in me shattered.
But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak.
I was a passenger in my own skin.
The monster’s hand slid from my mouth to my throat, holding me like something precious. Something owned.
“You were always ours,” he whispered.
And in that moment, I knew—this wasn’t just fear.
It was annihilation.
My body was still. But inside—inside, I was on fire.
I wanted to scream. To claw. To bite.
But the command still gripped me like iron.
I felt him behind me—closer now. The monster. The one whose voice lived in my nightmares. His presence filled the car, pressed against my skin like heat, like pressure, like something that would never leave.
His hand moved slowly down my arm, the backs of his fingers grazing from my shoulder to the inside of my elbow.
My skin crawled. Every inch of me recoiled, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t cry.
Couldn’t even blink.
“You’re doing so well,” he whispered.
I shook inside. Silent and screaming.
Then I felt it.
A pinch. Barely more than a prick behind my knee.
Something cold sliding into my blood.
The drug hit slow. Creeping tendrils of warmth curled through my limbs like smoke. My heartbeat stuttered, then slowed. My fingers twitched, then sagged.
But the fire in me—it wasn’t out. Not yet.
I saw Gabe in my mind again. His face. The blood. The sound of my name as he screamed for me.
My heart bucked against the stillness. Just once.
The man behind me didn’t speak again. He didn’t have to.
The programming did the rest.
I could feel the darkness rising to swallow me whole.
Then—
A voice.
Crackling. Distant. Male.
“…Silas. We have her.”
And then, through the haze of my failing consciousness—I heard his voice.
Silas.
Feral. Furious. Unhinged.
“Who the fuck is this?”
But I couldn’t answer.
My body had already given in.
The monster leaned in, his mouth at my ear.
“You were always ours.”
The last thing I felt was his breath against my skin—cold and calm and final.
And then nothing.