61. Chapter 61
Arwen
The servant leads me through the halls again, the same way she did before, and I don’t question it because there is nothing to question. There never is.
When she opens the door to his office, my heart reacts before I even see him.
Vex is behind the desk, an arm slung over the back of his chair. The surface is a mess of papers and maps held down by heavy crystals.
He pulls me like gravity itself, and relief hits me. It feels like coming up for air.
He’s here. He still wants me.
Even after the beautiful redheaded woman visited. I try to remember who she was but come up blank.
Oh well.
She’s not important.
“Come sit, Angel.” He says with a smile, patting his knee.
I float to him without hesitation, like my body already knows where it belongs. I sit on his knee, and he wraps an arm around my waist, steadying me in place.
“Look at something for me, Angel,” he whispers, leaning back. “It’s very important.”
“Anything,” I breathe out.
He reaches forward and taps a photograph on the desk in front of us. I obediently lower my eyes.
A man stands in front of a helicopter. He’s wearing a black t-shirt that stretches across broad shoulders, tattoos spilling down both arms. A phone held to his ear, his expression hard and irritated.
I can’t stop staring at him. It stirs something up inside of me.
A faint tug.
Is he familiar?
It’s probably nothing.
Vex’s fingers trace slow circles against my thighs. He likes me in short dresses, so I like short dresses.
“It’s very important that you remember this, Angel,” he says, voice low. “This is a very bad man. We can’t trust him. He’s trying to hurt me.”
Hot fear spikes me instantly. Because the idea of him being hurt feels unbearable. Something inside me would break if that happened.
“You don’t want me to be hurt, do you, Angel?”
“No,” I growl, the answer ripping out of me.
“Good girl,” he says, nuzzling his face into my hair. Satisfaction floods through me at his praise.
But I look back at the picture, and something doesn’t sit right.
A strange feeling presses against my ribs, through the dizzying fog. Like a memory trying to surface. It goes against the instructions.
My brow tightens as I try to focus. The feeling grows instead of fading.
Wrong.
Why does it feel—
“It’s important that we hurt him before he hurts me,” Vex continues. “We need to destroy him. Erase him. Can you do that for me, Angel?”
My chest locks. I can’t get air past it. The thought of this man from the picture gone, erased—it cuts through everything.
The same tattooed arms wrapped around me. A forehead pressed against mine. A rough voice calling me ‘baby’. Safety.
“No!” I shout. The word tears out of me, and with it comes a crack in my mind, like glass shattering.
Brutal clarity floods in.
My vision sharpens, the room snapping into focus. My mind spins, catching up to reality. I stop myself from reacting further. I can’t.
Because I understand instantly what has happened.
Vex is inside my head.
His hand tightens on my hip in a brutal pinch at my outburst. I slam a shield over my mind, hard. I latch onto the clarity like it’s the only solid thing in the world, holding it so tightly it almost hurts, building walls around it brick by brick in my mind as he watches me.
It’s weak against his immense power, but holding.
My hands curl slightly against my will as I force my breathing to stay even and my face to stay still.
“No, absolutely not. We can’t let him hurt you. He must be destroyed.” I say, hoping I’m giving the performance of my life.
I keep my expression empty and obedient.
The shield trembles inside my mind as I hold it in place. Months of practice with Atticus are the only thing keeping me from falling back under whatever nightmare Vex has wrapped around my thoughts. Even now, I can feel it pressing against the barrier, searching for cracks.
For a tense moment, he says nothing, studying my face. Then his hand eases off my waist, the pressure of him lifting just slightly as if he’s satisfied with what he sees in me.
“Tomorrow,” he says, voice calm, almost gentle. “You need to use your power to make sure he can never come near us again. Can you do that, my Angel? For me? For us?”
I lower my gaze and force a smile onto my face, hoping he doesn’t notice the way my voice wavers. “Of course,” I say. “Anything for you.”
His smile returns, and the sight of it makes my skin crawl. “Good girl.”
I want to throw up.
“Now go back to your room, Angel. I’ll be there soon. Put on something silky for me.”
Disgust crashes through me so hard I flinch. Thankfully, he smacked my ass as he said it, so the flinch doesn’t give me away.
“Okay, my love,” I say. The words taste like acid.
I turn and walk out of the room. The moment the door closes, the act fractures.
I make it back to my room on autopilot, my feet carrying me like they still belong to someone else. The second I’m inside, I go straight to the nightstand. My hands hover uselessly over a drawer. Why did I come over here?
Something silky to wear…
No! It hits me again. I pinch my skin, forcing my mind to hold on to the clarity.
I can’t go back to him. I can’t let him touch me. I can’t—
My mind stutters.
What am I even thinking?
Of course, I can. He’s the love of my life.
I would be grateful for it. Honored, even. The thought of his attention, his approval, his—
NO!
The break is violent.
It isn’t a thought so much as a rupture, like something inside me tears cleanly in half. My knees almost give out. I force myself to stay conscious inside my own mind, grabbing onto that clarity again before it slips away. It burns, holding on, like my own thoughts are resisting me.
I put all my focus into my shield. A plan can come later. I have to fight to get control of my mind.
Piece by piece, I rebuild it, stacking it carefully in my mind the way Atticus taught me—checking for weak points, reinforcing the cracks, sealing the edges where something might slip in. Over and Over. Thicker. Taller.
Focus.
I can do this.