Page 111 of Where Angels Fall

“You sold me,” she whispers, but it comes out so very loudly.

With Kai propping her up, she looks down at him. Not with love. Not with hate. With pity.

“You are a sad, sad man, Dad,” she says softly. “I hope you enjoy your life with all your money and all your power.”

She turns, her eyes finding mine, and her entire face shifts. She looks at me like she does in fact love me. She smiles.

And I smile back.

I step forward, ready to hold her, and run away from this mess. But his voice sounds again.

“You always were such an ungrateful little whore.”

Everything stops. It seems as if even the ocean pauses, the wind silences, and my heart freezes.

She pauses mid-step.

Slowly, she turns back. Her knuckles white around the grip she has on the stained knife.

Howard Dally grins a vile grin, thinking he’s won by her reaction.

“Running back to your gang of psychos? Spread your legs for them too?”

I move... but I’m too late. She crosses the distance with one limping stride, carrying her own weight.

And with a snarl I’ve never heard from her before, she draws the blade across his throat. Clean, precise and fucking brutal.

A red line opens beneath his jaw. For a split second, no one moves.

Then blood pours.

He gurgles, hands straining uselessly behind him, eyes wide with shock as he topples forward onto the concrete. Dead before he even hits the ground.

My dark angel stands over him, chest rising and falling rapidly. Finally, the knife drops to the ground before she turns back to me. Devils cheer; the sound makes me smile. She is one of them, and they all know it.

I meet her halfway.

Her blood-streaked face tilts up to mine.

“I’m done choosing people who don’t choose me,” she breathes.

My throat tightens painfully. And then she kisses me. Hard. A desperate, possessive kiss. Her mouth tastes like salt and iron and something wild. Hands fist in my shirt as I grip her waist, anchoring her against me as the night air shifts around us.

“Let’s go home, Angel,” I murmur against her lips. “I have a doctor at the club waiting for us.”

She whimpers, kissing me repeatedly, and I chuckle a breathy laugh against her lips. Carefully, like she’s made of glass, I slide my hands beneath her thighs and lift her.

She gasps softly, her legs wrapping around my waist, locking there despite the pain I know must be screaming through her body. Her arms circle my neck, fingers tangling in my hair like she’s staking her claim.

Like she’s not letting go again.

“Careful,” Kai mutters from behind us

I shoot him a look that says I’d burn the world before I’d drop her.

Maddison presses her forehead to mine, breathing me in. Her weight settles against me, warm and real and alive. Mine.

The dock is quiet now, littered with bodies and memories I want to push out of my mind.