Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
ANGELICA
Darkness wasn’t silent.
It whispered.
“You’re such a good girl.”
Soft. Slithering. Sickening.
“Such a good little liar… for us.”
The words coiled around my spine, dragging something ancient to the surface. Not a memory. A truth.
I had been lying for so long, I didn’t know where the truth ended anymore.
And now I was back.
Back in Hell.
But this Hell I knew right? This Hell I’d survived before.
Only this time, it felt different.
Not like punishment.
Like purpose.
Cold air fought for purchase in my aching chest, dragged deeper with each breath. The tiles beneath me slick. Somewhere distant, a voice hummed. Another recited something that sounded like prayer. My body was still. Stolen.
But inside me—something stirred.
A name.
Silas .
A knife in the dark.
Theo .
A drug I couldn’t kick.
Jude .
A bruise that never healed.
And then?—
And then.
Gabe —
My eyes fluttered open.
The man from my mind—the shadowed monster—stood over me.
Real. Solid. Close.
Run .
It was the last word Gabe said to me. Screamed at me.
The old me would have.
But I didn’t run this time.
My lips moved. Sluggish. Dry. Curling as I formed the sound. “F…”
The monster tilted his head. Watching. Waiting.
“F-fuck… you.”
Confusion flickered in his face. Only for a second. A breath.
But it was enough.
Every touch my brothers ever gave me roared back.
Every flicker of desire. Every scream of rage.
Every broken thing they loved in me.
And I used it.
A shiver tore through me.
He felt it.
“Are you fighting us, little flame?” he asked, crouching closer. Voice like poison honey. “Are you fighting my hold on you?”
Yes.
Yes, I was.
Not for me.
For them.
A smile cut across his mouth. Slow. Cruel.
“It doesn’t matter.”
His voice was a needle beneath my skin.
“You won’t be alone for long. You wanted them so badly…”
He leaned in. Whispered against my mouth.
“I bought one for us to keep.”
To keep.
A pinch came at my side.
Movement before I realised.
Then I knew what they’d done.
“No,” I shook my head, fighting the drug that was coming.
A low, guttural moan came from somewhere in the dark in front of me.
Deep and masculine.
Raw and pain-filled.
The tortured sound came again.
And this time.
This time I knew.
I knew what they’d done.
Gabe .
The monster in front of me smiled.
That smiled blurred, then slipped.
Maybe it was me that slipped?
The darkness didn’t take me this time.
I fell into it.
But before I hit the bottom I heard one whisper.
A whisper from a brother I loved.
“Where is she?”