Chapter 26
Emma
Four thousand, eight hundred, and thirty-seven…four thousand, eight hundred, and thirty-eight… It was official. I was cracking up. I had been counting the ceiling fan rotations for hours. Before that, it was heartbeats. My throat hurt from the crying and begging that I’d done in the last few days.
Lara had come with lunch and kind words.
She’d patted my face and told me to stay strong, but for what?
Angel hadn’t said a word to me before locking me away, and he hadn’t come to see me.
He made sure I was fed, and like when I was in this room before, the bathroom was stocked with supplies, and the dresser had plenty of too-big clothes.
Lara had taken the hamper of dirty clothes with her, and I imagined that I would get them back at breakfast tomorrow.
Angel could keep me in here for years.
When I heard the beeping of the keypad, my head snapped to the doorway.
Lara wasn’t due back until five for dinner.
Angel stepped into the room, and lead settled in the pit of my stomach.
His face was twisted with anger and something that could resemble sadness.
Join the fucking club, I thought, but no matter how fierce the thought, how hot the anger, the haunted look on Angel’s face stopped me from telling him to fuck off or any of the other vile things that I’d said to Lili over the last few days.
“Omar and I had lunch with Manny,” Angel said. His voice was flat, but not entirely without emotion.
I swallowed hard. “Okay?”
“He dropped out of school,” he said. “He’s going to start shadowing Omar so that he can become an enforcer.”
The words penetrated the deep confusion I found myself in. “He’s fourteen,” I said. “That can’t be legal.”
“Technically, his mother has unenrolled him so that he can be homeschooled,” Angel explained. “I’m sure she’ll keep teaching him math or whatever bullshit the state makes her, but he’ll spend most of his days training with Omar.”
My stomach twisted sickeningly. Manny was a kid.
I could see his scared, pale face so clearly; he had looked like a baby while I’d patched the bullet graze on his arm.
And now he was going to train to be one of the men on the front lines of whatever territory war the Castillos had going with the Rojas?
“He’s too young,” I said.
Angel’s jaw tightened. “I know that.”
“Then why would you —?”
“How could I prevent it?” he shot back. “I didn’t pull him out of school; his mother did that all on her own.” There was a bitterness to his voice now. “I’m sure Padre had something to do with it, but he would never admit it. Manny is thrilled.”
He was so angry, and I was just so tired. “Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked. “Why are you even here?”
Angel’s breath stuttered in his chest. His eyes blazed into mine, and despite myself, I felt that look all the way down to my toes.
It was clear now: he wanted comfort, and for Angel, comfort would always be sexual.
So he came to me, even as mad as he was, because I was that comfort source for him.
He could look elsewhere and find it easily, but he swallowed his anger enough to come to me. The thought made me dizzy.
Damn him, I had the time to think, and then we were moving at the same time.
Our bodies slammed into each other, and Angel hiked me up into his arms. I could do nothing but wrap my legs around his waist as he kissed and bit at my neck.
“Why do I still want you, Emma, huh?” he breathed against my collarbone.
I threaded my fingers through his hair, pulling on it enough that he hissed in a mixture of pleasure and pain.
“Why do I still want you?” I retorted, groaning when he slid a hand up my shirt to cup one of my breasts, pinching at my nipple until it was standing at attention.
“I shouldn’t want you.” I buried my face against his neck and bit him, hard, and he groaned against me, grinding against me until I could feel just how hard he was for me. “You locked me up.”
He pulled back enough to look me in the eye. He wasn’t sorry, not in the slightest. “You lied to me,” he spat.
“I didn’t —”
Angel turned us so that he could splay me across the bed. “You’re pregnant,” he said, hovering over me. “Don’t deny it.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I didn’t lie about it before.” Angel wrenched the too-big shorts down my legs and tossed them over his shoulder.
“You didn’t tell me. You were going to leave me and not tell me.
” The words were short, cold, and clipped; they didn’t match the fire burning his eyes, or the way his hands seemed to brand me as he spread my legs open so that he could settle between them.
Angel tugged my panties to the side, smiling viciously when he saw that I was already wet.
“It’s not very convincing that you want to leave when you’re always so ready for me before I even touch you, Emma,” he taunted.
I didn’t like the way he was saying my name. It was like he had to remind himself of who I was; it made him feel dangerous. “Angel —”
His eyes cut to my face. “I want you,” he said simply, without any emotion behind it.
“I can’t stop wanting you.” Angel hooked his hands under my knees, situated himself so that he was pressed against me, and then he thrust home.
I cried out, and because he had me so pinned, I couldn’t meet the movement of his hips.
I had to lay there and let him pour his aggression into me.
There was tension between my shoulder blades that was progressively getting tighter and tighter the harder he fucked into me. “Angel,” I begged. “Touch me. Make me come.”
His gaze sharpened. “Oh, you need me to make you come?” he mocked. “What are you going to give me?”
My heart flipped over in my chest; I didn’t like the look on his face. “What do you want?”
He let my legs drop to the bed and leaned over me instead; I moaned as he changed the angle of his thrusts. He didn’t stop until I could feel his breath against my face. “Kiss me,” he said. “Show me that you’re mine, that you aren’t going anywhere.”
We hadn’t talked about the fact that I hadn’t kissed him since our wedding.
I knew it bothered him — Angel always seemed upset when I’d turn my face away when he tried — but there was a part of me that couldn’t let him put his mouth on mine again.
It was the part that didn’t want to love Angel, and that part still didn’t. I frowned. “Angel, I —”
Angel’s face hardened, and he pulled himself away from me, leaving me empty and wanting. I watched his back as he stalked toward the door, barely flinching when he slammed it behind him. It was the lock clicking back into place that made the tears fall.
I didn’t know how long I cried, but when the tears had dried up, I didn’t feel much of anything. The hurt I felt from his betrayal, the anger from being locked up, it was all hidden behind a wall of…nothing.
The look that Angel gave me before he turned his back on me was clear as a bell: we couldn’t trust each other.
How could anything else be between us if we didn’t trust each other?
I touched my belly; I had been doing that a lot over the past few days.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Daddy and I are such a mess; you don’t deserve that. ”
I glanced up at the security camera in the corner of the room. The little red light let me know that someone was watching, and while it wasn’t necessarily a comfort, I supposed it was nice to know that I wasn’t entirely alone. Angel hadn’t —
The light went off. My breathing hitched, and a pit formed in my stomach. Had he truly abandoned me then? Would anybody be in at five to bring me dinner, or was I being left here to rot?
“Angel wouldn’t do that,” I said out loud, needing to actually hear the words.
“He wouldn’t actually let me die here.” No, he wouldn’t risk the baby; he’d wait until I delivered…
then he’d get rid of me, I thought, and it soured my stomach.
Bile pooled in my mouth, and I had to rush to the bathroom.
My stomach folded itself inside out, and the little bit that I had managed to eat for lunch ended up in the toilet.
I sat, forehead pressed against the white porcelain, and breathed for several long minutes, testing my stomach.
When my stomach remained calm, I stood and washed my mouth out in the sink.
I looked in the mirror at the woman I had become: I didn’t recognize her.
There were bags under her wild eyes and hollows in her cheeks.
Angel did this to me, I thought bitterly and shifted my gaze away from those haunted eyes.
Opening the bathroom door, I came face to face with a massive man that I had never seen before.
He eyed me for a split-second before grabbing me and throwing me over his shoulder.
I grunted at the way his shoulder dug into my belly.
Nausea hit me again. “If you try to scream,” the man growled, and I could feel a blade held against my side, razor-sharp, “I’ll gut you before anyone can even think to rescue you. Understand?”
I opened my mouth to acknowledge what he’d said, but then shut it again. The man carried me through the door. Pay attention! It was the first lesson Lili had taught me in our self-defense sessions. Take in everything around you, any information that could be useful.
I peeked up at the security cameras; they were all off.
Angel wouldn’t have done this; he wouldn’t have wasted the energy of cutting off the cameras.
Whoever this man was, he had connections on the inside, but he didn’t want Angel to find out about it.
Why else would he need to sneak through the compound like this?
At the end of the hallway was a body and a lot of blood. Angel. Bile rose in my throat again. Don’t panic. That was the second lesson Lili taught me. Figure out what’s going on before you lose your head. I forced myself to breathe and look at the man sprawled across the white marble floor.
Immediately I could tell that it wasn’t Angel. He was too broad, but he wasn’t tall enough to be Omar. We were getting farther away, but before we turned the corner, I realized that it was David. Was he alive or dead? Dread spread through my body, dark and thick and viscous.
The man opened a side door, and I got my first breath of fresh air in days…
and then I noticed the car idling. Being taken to a secondary location means you won’t make it back.
Fight as hard as you can. But there was no fighting with a blade already sticking into the soft skin of my belly.
I tried to angle away from it as best as I could, worried that he would slip, and then that precious life that had taken root would be snubbed out.
The man pressed a button, and the trunk of the car popped open. He tossed me, and the moment I landed, grunting with the force of it, I started screaming, loud and ragged, until the lid came down on my head, casting me into darkness.