23. Angelo
23
ANGELO
Hammad stared at me with flat eyes. “This is a bad idea.”
Valentin liked him because he allowed Valentin to believe his billion-euro construction enterprise didn’t require violence to maintain.
I liked him because he was as murderous as me.
“Don’t fucking care,” I answered.
Hammad swore in flawless Arabic, English, and French. Born in Morocco like my mother, and trafficked like her, he’d escaped to America, where we’d met in high school—both using our fists to carve a path for ourselves in a world that didn’t give a shit about anything but how much money you had.
“She better fucking be worth it.”
I shoved my old friend against the wall, my fingers tight around his throat. “He’s a rapist who drugs women so they can’t fight back. And he raped Ana.”
Hammad knew about my obsession with Ana because he’d been the one to spy on her when I couldn’t. “Boris Tchérnov is the fucking bratva,” he rasped, not giving an inch, his liquid brown eyes flashing with fire.
“Ana belongs to me. And nobody fucks with what’s mine,” I snarled, stepping away from the chasm that was my need to give my angel Grégoire’s head on a platter so she’d fucking smile at me, rather than sheer possessiveness.
Hammad’s smirk didn’t fade as his deeply tanned skin turned red.
I released him and shoved myself away. “Asshole.”
He shrugged and picked up the bag he’d dropped earlier, slinging it over his shoulder, before tapping the radio in his left ear.
“Let’s go.”
We infiltrated the warehouse that concealed the upstart’s illicit poker game, our feet silent over the detritus. When I would have taken the lead, Hammad pressed a gloved hand against my chest. “ Stenna ,” he said. Wait. “We’re going in. Is the girl ready?”
“Wake up, slut.” Valentin’s voice was tinny over the radio.
I heard Ana’s murmured protest.
“Put this in your ear,” he said to her.
“What’s going on?” Her voice was breathy, despite the distance.
“For every man Angelo kills for you today, I’m going to leave a welt on your ass,” he promised her, and my cock hardened instantly.
Hammad looked over his shoulder at me with an eyebrow raised. Grateful that the darkness hid how much Valentin’s sadism toward Ana turned me on, I shrugged my shoulders.
“Switch to the other channel, Valentin,” I growled. Everyone would hear me, but the attack team wouldn’t hear my lover and my angel as he made her come to the sound of Grégoire’s suffering. “ Vas-y ,” I said to him, grinning when Valentin snorted with amusement. Go ahead.
“He’s outside a warehouse where Grégoire is playing poker right now,” Valentin murmured.
Ana gasped, but didn’t say anything.
I gestured to Hammad, who kicked the door in. Shouts followed, and light streamed out as men leapt out of chairs, shoving the table over and sending cards and chips flying.
Aim. Fire. Aim. Fire. Grégoire had surrounded himself with low-level scum, the fool, and he’d pay the price for it. To my surprise, the rage that normally filled me during a hit stayed dormant, allowing my focus to remain clear.
Tchérnov knelt behind the refrigerator door, popping off shots the best he could.
One of my men swore when Tchérnov managed to shoot his gun out of his hand.
“Enough,” I roared when the only enemy left alive was the asshole who’d hurt my woman.
“Angelo?” Ana whispered, her voice tentative and shaky in my ear.
I didn’t answer.
Instead, I stalked toward Grégoire, who was so fucking stupid, he kept his gun trained on me.
“You’re going to pay for what you did to Ana Costa,” I said.
“Taking what already belonged to me?” he sneered. “You’ll pay for keeping her from me.”
“How many?” Valentin asked through the radio, his voice deceptively casual.
I looked around the room and noted the six bodies on the floor—four men dressed casually and two bodyguards. “Six,” I said. “And one of my men was shot in the hand.”
Ana gasped. “No,” she said. “Why are you—what are you doing?”
Valentin’s silky voice murmured through the speaker, “Justice for you, you stupid slut.”
“Who are you—Who are you talking to?” Grégoire asked, his eyes wide.
Hammad rolled his eyes at me.
“The sweet angel that you violated,” I said. Now the rage overtook me—possessive and furious at the thought that this man had wronged her, taken what was supposed to be safe, her fiancé, and betrayed her.
Grégoire swung around wildly to aim his gun at Hammad, who didn’t even blink.
“ Fils de pute ,” Hammad said softly, then reached up and snatched the gun out of Grégoire’s hands by the barrel. “And a coward.”
I surged forward, slamming Grégoire against the wall and then down to the ground.
“My father will kill you,” he snarled, struggling against the weight of my body but unable to throw me off.
“Maybe.” I didn’t care. Every day was a gift. One day they’d run out, and if it was sooner rather than later, I’d die knowing I’d taken my revenge on the man who’d raped my angel.
“Angelo. Sir, ” Ana murmured, her voice tortured, and immediately, my rage cooled back into an icy clarity.
“Hang him up,” I growled.
In moments, my men had draped a rope over the metal trusses that lined the ceiling, and strung Grégoire up by his wrists. He kicked and screamed, to no avail.
“ Sir? ” Ana’s voice whispered in my ear. “What’s going on?”
“We strung him up from the rafters.”
“Let me go!” Grégoire yelled.
I drew my favorite knife from its sheath. Long and curved, I used it to carve the organs out of the men I tortured.
“No,” I said simply, then slashed the knife across his clothes. When he kicked out at me, I kicked in his kneecap with my steel-toe boots. He screamed, and I waited for him to still again before disrobing him.
“I cut off his clothes, angel, and now I’m going to cut off his dick.”
My angel gasped, but didn’t tell me to stop. I heard the whine of Valentin’s crop and then her answering whimper, and a bead of precum dripped out of my cock.
“Valentin killed three men for you,” I murmured into the radio at my ear. “And now there are six dead men here, killed by me and my men in your name.”
Grégoire’s eyes bugged open. “Is she there? Are you talking to her? You sick son of a bitch. You think killing me will impress her? The only thing that slut cares about is a cock between her legs and the money she gets for turning tricks.”
Rage colored my vision red, and I jerked the knife across his face, leaving a long slice from his eyebrows to his jaw.
Grégoire screamed.
“Ana, what do you want me to do to him?”
She was silent.
“Valentin,” she whimpered. “I can’t do this.”
“You can, princess,” he said, his voice lower and softer than I’d ever heard it before. “Move onto my lap.”
I couldn’t hear the movements, but I heard his praise when she was where he wanted her.
“Now, Angelo can slice Tchérnov’s throat and be done with it, or I can fuck you with the handle of this whip while he does everything to Grégoire that Grégoire did to you.”
Ana moaned, and my patience ran out. “Tell me what you want, my love.”
“I want, I want—” her breath came in adorable little whimpers. “I can’t?—”
Valentin’s rhythmic slaps against her cunt made me impatient to return home, so I could bend her over the nearest piece of furniture and fuck the rebellion out of her.
“Kill him,” Valentin snapped. “Kill him and come home to us.”
“No,” Ana said.
“No, what, toy?” Valentin said, his voice silky with disappointment.
“No, ma?tre . No, sir,” she gasped. “I want him to suffer .”
Oh fuck. I was going to come in my pants.
“Your wish is my command,” I said, walking up to my captive with an unhinged smile on my face. “Ana says she wants you to suffer.”
“No,” Grégoire gasped. “No, please, no.”
“He’s pissing his pants, my love.”
Valentin’s soft chuckle, his delight in Grégoire’s humiliation, was as delicious as the fierce expression I imagined on Ana’s face.
I reached for the man’s flaccid dick. He jerked and wailed, kicking his feet out toward me, as if I couldn’t overpower him in an instant. Instead of stepping away, I grabbed his legs, then spun him around so I was at his back, breathing down his neck, his bare ass pressed against my chest.
“You’re disgusting,” I said.
Grégoire sneered. “Her father promised her to me. What the fuck does anyone care if I sample the goods before finding myself tied to American trash for the rest of my life?”
Ana gasped.
“ Doucement ,” Valentin said. Easy.
“That’s not what happened,” she whispered, the pain in her voice leaving an ache in my chest.
I slid my knife across the man’s stomach before slicing long, deep cuts across it, not deep enough for his intestines to spill out, but deep enough to scare the shit out of him. He groaned, tears spilling down his face, and I leapt back to avoid the piss that streamed down his legs.
“Ana, I’m going to carve this man into tiny little pieces for you, and then I’m coming home to sink my cock into your soaking cunt.”
“You stupid fucking slut, are you sleeping with both of them?” Grégoire said, unable to keep his mouth shut, even to the very end.
I dragged my knife across Grégoire’s neck, my fury at his disrespect outweighing my need to indulge my love of torture, eager to fly back to Nice where Valentin and Ana waited for me.
Blood spurted all over me and the floor.
“You couldn’t have let me put down a fucking tarp first?” Hammad asked. “That was a dick move.”
Ana cried out my name, the sound of her climax sweet in my ear. She whimpered softly as she came down, her breath coming in hard pants. “Shit. Sir, I meant to say Sir,” she corrected herself.
“Good girl,” Valentin said, and she hummed her satisfaction. Clothes rustled, and bodies moved on the line. “Come home to me, Angelo,” he continued softly.
“Always.”