Chapter 17 Angelina
seventeen
Angelina
Ipull the last pin from my hair as I push open my chamber door, already mentally making a note of everything I need to do before I can go home to Chesca.
Three hours of seeing DeLuca's smirk and watching him sit there like he owned the courtroom while his lawyers tap-danced around evidence that should bury him is exhausting.
Five minutes. I just need five minutes without someone watching me.
Cole is outside. I asked him to wait, because after three hours of that circus, I needed to breathe without an audience. Even a protective one.
20 days. The countdown pulses beneath everything now. Every ruling, every motion, every step through this building where someone left a flower on my desk. Two threats circling. One faceless. One—
"Hello, Angelina. You look tired, cara."
The pins scatter across the floor.
No.
Adrian is sitting behind my desk. In my chair. Like he belongs there.
My body knows before my brain catches up. Everything narrows, the room shrinking to just him, sitting in my space, wearing that smile I used to think was charming before I learned what lived underneath it.
Move. Scream. Do something.
I can't.
Dio, not this. Not here. Not now.
Everything in me screaming run. But I'm a federal judge in my own chambers. I don't run.
"Get out of my chair."
He doesn't move. "I just want to talk."
He leans back like he owns the space. Like he owns everything. "About Francesca."
"Her name doesn't belong in your mouth."
"She's my daughter too. Legally, I have rights."
He stands and moves around the desk with that deliberate grace he always had. I know this dance. The slow approach, each step calculated to make me feel smaller and to remind me there's nowhere to go.
The door is closed behind me, for privacy like I always do. Now that habit feels like a cage.
Move. Move, Angelina. You're a federal judge. You've sentenced men twice his size.
But the old programming kicks in before I can override it. Stay still. Don't provoke.
"I've been thinking." He trails his fingers along the edge of my desk, then picks up my pen.
Examines it like it's interesting and puts it down in the wrong place, Deliberately wrong, because he knows I'll notice and it will burrow under my skin like a splinter.
"Eight years is a long time. Maybe I was. .. hasty. Leaving."
My nails cut into my palms. "You didn't leave. You were removed."
The smile flickers for just a heartbeat before smoothing back into place like oil over water.
"Semantics." He's closer now, maybe four feet away, and his eyes travel down my body with that slow, proprietary assessment I remember too well. Like he's checking inventory he's disappointed in.
"You've filled out. Motherhood suits you." The smile sharpens into something with edges. "Though I notice you haven't lost all the baby weight."
The words land the way they always did, wrapped in something that sounds almost like a compliment until you feel the knife sliding between your ribs.
Two nights ago, Cole made me look at myself in a mirror and told me I was beautiful. Traced every curve like it was something precious, something worthy of worship.
Now Adrian's gaze scrapes over the same body like it's something to critique and failed to meet his standards.
I keep my face neutral. I've had years of practice, years of courtrooms and hostile witnesses and men who thought they could rattle a judge with a well-placed sneer.
"The point is, I'd like to know my daughter."
Three feet now. I refuse to back up and give him that satisfaction.
"Shared custody. Very civilized. Summers in Salvencia, holidays here."
The floor drops out from under me.
No. No, no, no.
"You're not taking her anywhere."
"I'm not asking permission, cara."
The word slides out like oil, and my stomach twists. Cara. He used to call me that right before he hurt me. Whispered it in my ear while his hand closed around my wrist. Said it softly in the car that night, right before he jerked the wheel into oncoming traffic and laughed at the sound I made.
My vision grays at the edges. The room tilts.
"I'm informing you."
Two feet now. His cologne hits me, heavy and suffocating. The same scent that clung to my hospital gown almost a decade ago, when the doctors were still trying to stop my contractions, and I called my uncle from that narrow bed and said I need out. He's going to kill us both.
"I have diplomatic resources you can't imagine." He's close enough now that I can smell his breath mint. "International courts that don't care about your uncle's... influence."
His eyes flick toward the door Cole is waiting behind.
"The bodyguard." Something ugly crawls into his smile. "I recognize the look. He's fucking you, isn't he?" He laughs softly, like we're sharing a private joke. "Does he know you're damaged goods? Or does he think he's special?"
The bookshelf presses into my back. I didn't even realize I was backing up, but now I'm trapped with law books digging into my shoulder blades.
Constitutional Law. Federal Procedure. Criminal Sentencing Guidelines. Volumes about justice and protection and rights, and none of them can help me now.
He reaches out with those manicured fingers, brushing my hair back, tucking a strand behind my ear like he has any right to touch me.
I flinch back hard enough that my head hits the shelf behind me. Pain sparks through my head, sharp and clarifying
His smile widens, feeding on my fear like it always did. "You're still so beautiful when you're scared."
Bile surges up my throat. My hands won't stop shaking. I've sentenced murderers without a tremor in my voice. I've stared down cartel lawyers and corrupt politicians and men who promised to kill me if I ruled against them.
But him—
"Children are so resilient, you know." His voice drops into something intimate and poisonous, the voice he used to use in bed right before everything went wrong. "They forget things. She won't even miss you after a few summers with me."
Chesca.
She's with Xander right now. After-school pickup, then homework, then whatever ridiculous game they're playing this week. She's safe. She's not here. She doesn't know this man is in my chambers threatening to rip her from everything she knows.
I can't breathe. I can't—
Three steps to the door. Maybe four. I could run.
But I won't move. I know this dance. Stay still. Don't provoke. Wait for it to pass.
Except it won't pass. Not this time. He's not going away. He's standing in my chambers, in my courthouse, threatening my daughter, and I'm locked in a pattern I learned almost a decade ago when running only made things worse.
His hand lifts again, reaching for my face, and my vision tunnels. The room shrinks to just him and me and the space between us that's disappearing too fast.
The door opens.
"Ready to—"
Cole's voice cuts off. I watch his face change in real time, the easy expression he wears when it's just us draining away like water through cracks as he takes in the scene. Me pinned against the bookshelf. Adrian's hand suspended mid-reach.
What's left is cold. Empty. The kind of empty that comes before violence.
Not toward me. The thought surfaces with absolute certainty. Whatever's about to happen, it will never be toward me.
Grazie a Dio.
The relief hits so hard my knees nearly buckle.
"Step away from her."
His voice is quiet, barely above a whisper, and somehow that's worse than any shout. This is a man who's already made his decision. Everything else is just formality.
Adrian turns, that diplomatic smile still plastered across his face. "Ah. The bodyguard."
He doesn't step away.
Cole goes completely still. Not frozen, but coiled, like a spring compressed past its tolerance, like a fault line in the last second before it slips.
Then he moves.
One moment in the doorway and the next his hand is wrapped around Adrian's throat, spinning him away from me and slamming him into the bookshelf so hard that law books cascade down around them like an avalanche.
Constitutional Law. Federal Procedure. The volumes about justice that couldn't protect me falling like dominoes.
"Cole—"
My voice comes out broken and barely there.
He doesn't look at me. His eyes stay locked on Adrian, and I've never seen Cole like this.
This is something else entirely. This is what lives underneath all that control.
Adrian chokes out words around Cole's grip, still trying to grin through it like this is all a misunderstanding between gentlemen. "You don't know who you're dealing with. Diplomatic immunity. International—"
Cole's fist connects with Adrian's nose.
The crunch of cartilage sounds wet and loud. Blood sprays across the wall, across Cole's white shirt, and across my certificates hanging in their frames. Adrian's head snaps back.
Stop him. You're a federal judge. This is assault happening in your chambers. In a federal building. You took an oath.
I don't move.
I watch Cole's fist connect with Adrian's mouth and split his lip wide open. Those same hands, the ones that held me like I was sacred and traced every inch of my body like I was precious, are destroying the man who destroyed me.
This is wrong. This is so wrong.
Something hot unfurls low in my belly, spreading outward like heat from a fire.
No. What—
The warmth registers before I understand what it means. Pooling between my thighs. Making my breath catch for reasons that have nothing to do with fear.
Cazzo. No. What is WRONG with you, Angelina?
My legs press together.
Cole hits him again, a body shot this time, ribs, and Adrian wheezes and sags like a puppet with cut strings.
Each blow is placed with deliberate care, the same deliberate care Cole uses when he touches me.
He's not out of control. He's in perfect control.
This is simply what his control looks like when it's pointed at destruction instead of pleasure.
My thighs press together tighter.