He moved his cold fingertips down her face until they disappeared to his side. Shutting off his gray eyes to her, they became dead again. “Like father, like son.”
“I refuse to believe it.”
Angel’s jaw flexed. He didn’t realize that he had made a mistake. He had let her see the bad, yes. However, he didn’t realize she had found the paranoia and behind that, she had found the scars.
“You wouldn’t have pushed that guy out of the way today if you were like him. You would have just let him hit me.” That she truly believed.
Leaning down, he whispered in her ear, giving her a warning he never gave others until it was too late. “Don’t underestimate me, Adalyn. It’ll be the last thing you do.”
Did he just threaten me?
Watching him walk away, she started to move her hands off the nightstand when she felt something metal move against her skin.
“You should leave now.”
Adalyn walked to the door he held open, looking into his eyes one last time. She now understood the fallen angel better. She was going to have to be more careful.
Her eyes traveled down to his neck where the black wolf was inked. You could only keep an animal caged for so long before they broke; either giving up to die or going insane trying to become free again.
“Goodbye, Angel.”
Ten
Checkmate, Asshole
Angel sat on the floor, staring at the wooden door that held a metal padlock, knowing it had been quiet for too long.
Getting up, he headed for the living room where he found Dominic cleaning their father’s Glocks at the table. Even though Dominic was only thirteen, their father had been teaching him about guns since he was ten. By now, his brother could break down a gun and put it back together in seconds.
Lucifer happened to be sitting next to him at the table, counting money that Angel assumed wasn’t his in the first place.
Sitting on the couch, he grabbed the remote and turned on the TV, flipping to a program that he probably shouldn’t be watching as gunfire was going off rampantly.
“Turn that shit off, Angel,” Lucifer snapped without looking up from the money he was counting.
His little finger hovered over the button for a moment before he pressed it. Then again, and again, and again.
“I said to fucking turn it off!” Lucifer growled as the television’s volume was only turned up higher.
He ignored him as he held the remote tightly in his sweaty hands.
With the noise making it impossible to count the money, Lucifer set down the wad of cash before he flew up to stand in front of his son. “Stand up.”
Angel looked up at his frightening father, who was seething in anger. He stood up on shaky legs, knowing if he didn’t, what was about to come would be much worse.
When the back of a hand met his cheek, it sent his eight-year-old scrawny body flying to the ground. Then everything went blurry as a hand grabbed his wrist and dragged him across the floor. The clicking of metal was all he could hear as Dominic began putting the gun he had been cleaning back together.
He was being pulled down the hallway when he saw his older brother block the view to the living room.
Dominic raised the Glock. Narrowing his eyes, he aimed at the back of their father’s head with his finger hoovering over the trigger.
A smile was brought to Angel’s lips while he was being dragged across the floor.
Click.
Even though the two brothers knew it wasn’t loaded, they both hoped the sound of the gun wasn’t one of an empty one. He watched as Dominic disappeared from view as he was dragged into a room, but before he fully disappeared, he saw the visible pride in his older brother’s eyes for the very first time.
When his arm was dropped to the floor, he heard a key going into a lock, making him turn his head to see his father slowly opening the padlocked door.
The shaking little body revealed inside the tiny closet started to move when light hit his face. It was like Angel was looking into the very near future of himself when his identical twin brother was pulled from the closet and he was dragged in.
“A-An … gel.” Matthias tried to speak, but his voice was weak. With horror on his face, he started to realize what Angel had done.
The two had a bond, a connection, so when Angel hadn’t heard a noise from the closet in hours, he knew Matthias had been broken. And he had known that if he didn’t do something soon, he would have been too far gone.
With the door closing and darkness setting in, Angel could only hope that when the door opened again, he was the same person as when the door closed …