Chapter 24 #2
“Well, given how things have gone with Cade,” Asha said, “I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to…improve my situation.”
She repeated the lines in just the way she’d rehearsed: a little playful, a little flirty, but not in a way that seemed unbelievable. She wanted to seem like she was trying to flatter him. That she was treating it as a transaction. It was what he would expect.
“Yeah, shame about Cade,” Angel replied, sounding like he couldn’t care less. “Can’t imagine that guy fucking you like a real man. Probably says ‘please’ every time.” He scoffed. “Pussy.”
Asha elected not to point out that while Cade traveled around doing Angel’s dirty work, Angel sat here in this glorified hovel drinking himself to death.
“Can I offer you a drink?” Asha asked in the same flirty way. “You know…before we get started.”
She hated his laugh. It was a dry cackle.
“A woman who finally accepts that she’s a whore and nothing more,” he said, amused. “Willing to serve. Maybe I was wrong about Cade.”
Asha took the opportunity to turn away from him so he couldn’t see the hatred in her expression.
She set the wine bottle on a small side table and retrieved one of the empty cups from the floor.
As she poured the crimson liquid into the cup, she had to appreciate that Leo had been right: the drug was undetectable.
“Pour one for yourself,” Angel said, slurring his words a little. “We’re celebrating you getting fucked by a real man.”
Asha gritted her teeth, but poured another cup for herself.
She presented the glass to him, and he motioned for her to sit on the edge of the bed.
Nervous sweat trickling down her spine, she did, fighting fiercely against the flashbacks of all the things that had been done to her the last time she was on this bed.
“To Asha, for finally knowing her place,” Angel announced, and to her astonishment, he downed the glass in one swallow. “Another!”
This fucking idiot, Asha thought. She poured him another cupful of the tainted wine and sat down on the bed again.
He babbled on for a couple minutes about some conquest he’d had with another woman the night before, and all the heads he’d mounted on his gate back in the day.
Meanwhile, she pretended to sip at her wine but kept her lips firmly closed.
Angel was either too drunk or too stupid to notice that her cup never emptied.
After another minute, he frowned. “I feel like shit.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Maybe you had too much to drink?”
“Nah, tha’s not it,” Angel slurred, though it definitely was. She may have drugged him, but he was also already drunk when she arrived. “I…I hold my liquor. Somethin’ else.”
He squinted at her, and Asha did her best to stare back at him impassively. But it didn’t matter. The effects of the drug were gripping him: his jaw slackened, his eyelids drooped, and his eyes had trouble focusing. He knew.
“You…you poisoned me!” Angel hissed at her. “You stupid fucking bitch, I’m gonna kill—”
He lumbered toward her on the bed, barely able to keep his balance, but he was big and decently strong.
Still, Asha was ready for him this time.
She took hold of his hand, outstretched to grab her, and pulled him into an embrace.
Her other hand wielded her knife, and in one smooth motion, she plunged the blade up under his ribs, cutting through the soft tissue like butter.
Time froze, and Angel choked on nothing, gasping for breath as she twisted the knife.
The look of utter shock on his face—the bizarre look of almost betrayal—gave Asha a shot of sweet adrenaline.
He didn’t scream; Cade had told her that he wouldn’t be able to.
And that simple fact gave her incredible satisfaction.
Asha withdrew the knife for only half a second before stabbing Angel again, and then again.
Hot, sticky blood coated her hands, and something in her relished it.
Finally, she pushed him backwards, and he tumbled onto the bed on his back, choking on his own blood.
He was incapable of calling out to Slade, or to anyone else, for that matter.
The air was scented with blood and booze, and she was going to let him die like this: bleeding out slowly, knowing before he slipped under the drug’s spell that he would never, ever wake up again.
She stood and wiped the blood knife on her skirt, watching him writhe in agony.
“You stupid fucking bitch,” Angel croaked again. “You killed us all. You and your boyfriend. You’ll see.”
Asha’s brow furrowed. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“You gonna make a big speech now?” he gasped, ignoring her. “Just kill me. Make—make your boy proud.”
The rage that she thought she’d buried surged forth once more, distracting her.
“You think you deserve mercy, asshole?” Asha snarled. “After what you’ve done?”
His weak chuckle sounded like a death rattle, and somehow that made her hate him even more, because she suddenly realized that he didn’t consider it a mercy to not hear her grievances.
On the contrary, the motherfucker was bored by them, and he was asking her to skip the lecture because he didn’t care one single iota about what he’d done to her and never would.
The revelation hit her like a slap. Though she’d known, in some way, that Angel was a man who didn’t exactly care who he hurt, she thought he’d do what abusers so often did: make excuses, distance himself, obfuscate.
But no: this man was telling her, in no uncertain terms, that he saw what he had done, and it simply did not affect him.
Asha trembled with rage and a brokenness that frightened her. Her palms grew sweaty around the knife handle.
“He wants my place,” Angel mumbled, his eyes glazed over. “Cade. Always wanted what I had. Power. Riches. Women.”
Asha didn’t bother to hide her disgust. “He’s not like you. And when you’re gone, nothing of value will be lost.”
“He’ll do what needs to be done, in the end. Just like me. Maybe he’ll manage what I couldn’t: knock you off—”
But he didn’t finish, because Asha slit his throat. His eyes went wide in shock for a split second before his whole body slackened, and blood sprayed from him like a firehose.
The light left his eyes, and he was gone.
Asha was covered in his blood, slick with it.
Her adrenaline abandoned her, and she fell to her knees on the floor, panting.
She sat there for far too long, knowing that at that moment, the Blackguard had begun their bloody coup, killing off Angel’s inner circle.
She was supposed to wait for Cade to come and get her.
She felt immense relief, just like Cade had promised, that Angel was gone forever.
That he could no longer torture her or others.
And there was satisfaction, closure, in being the one who delivered what he ultimately deserved.
There was satisfaction in the way he’d underestimated her and she’d proved him so very wrong.
However, a sickening dread at his last warning sat like a lead weight in her chest. When she finally stood and turned back toward the door, her heart stopped. She hadn’t noticed it on her way in; she’d been too nervous. Now, all at once, she was terrified.
Because there, pinned to Angel’s door, was a black mask emblazoned with the emblem of a golden eye.