Brax appeared, running a gentle hand through my hair. “He did, Tessie. But you can’t be so naïve to think you can go back to the past. Not now. Not after what you did.”

My heart smashed into pieces. He was right.

Q’s muscles bunched beneath me, hoisting me higher, bringing my chest to his face. He trembled as he whispered tortured words into my neck. “Your mind is not broken. Your mind is not f**king broken.”

Somehow, I didn’t think he spoke to me.

He rambled in French. “Si vous me l’enlevez, je le jure devant Dieu je vais ... Je vais ...” If you take her from me, I swear to f**king God I'll... I'll... He didn’t finish. Instead, he lowered me in his arms, bundled me tight, and roared at White Rodent, “Did you f**king think you could get away with this? Rape women? Traffic them? Drug them? You’re a f**king dead man and the only place you’re going to is hell. I guarantee your corpse will be chopped into little pieces.” Q chewed on every word. His anger was palpable, filling the room with thick tension.

I looked up, bewitched with the way his wings rustled with ferocity and he stood so rigid and unswerving. He looked toward Franco. “Bring them. The pliers, too.”

Q turned on his heel and strode out the room. I curled tighter into his body as the corridor contracted around us, making me feel like I lived in the belly of a ginormous snake. My snapped finger threatened to send me into darkness again, but I held on. More insects came to nibble on my brain and a procession of visions trailed after us. My mum, dad, and Brax all followed as Angel Q whisked me off to safety.

Q bent his head. “I’ll pay them back like for like, esclave. Mark my f**king words, they’ll wish they were dead before I’ve finished.”

A burst of heat filled me as black wings fanned around us, entrapping us in a cocoon. His hotness was a bonfire against my chilled skin, and he carried me as if I was a feather.

A damaged and broken feather.

I didn’t trust anything anymore. This couldn’t be real. I’d done nothing to warrant such saving.

If only this was real. If only I was being taken away. Maybe I was dying. Maybe my brain created its own sense of finality. Saying goodbye to Q. Majestic Q with his raven wings and cloud of crows.

“You are dying. Confess your sins now, child, or you’ll never be welcomed into heaven.” My mother wrung her hands. “Confess how you screwed up our life. How you ruined your brother’s life. How you’ve ruined a man’s heart. Just die already.”

I choked on the intense hatred gleaming in my mother’s eyes. I couldn’t believe the pain she caused.

“I never wa—wanted to be a burden.” The tears I’d been holding all this time spilled. Once they started, they wouldn’t stop.

Q jerked to a halt. “No, esclave. Stop it. You’re not a burden. Never.”

With a shaky hand, I reached up and caught a black oily feather from his wings. They quivered as he wrapped them tighter around us like a shield. I ran my fingers over the quill. “I confess to everything. I’m worthless and want to die.”

Then I passed out.

Chapter 13

You’re my obsession, I’m your possession. You own the deepest part of me…

Words lost all meaning.

I became a creature of suffering.

Tess wanted to die. My Tess. The woman who made my heart keep beating had resorted to the last option available.

She wants to die.

She wants to leave me permanently.

Whatever she’d lived through had been too much. Gone was the strong woman I knew, replaced with a shadow, a damaged hologram of who she used to be.

My arms tightened so hard I worried I might snap her in half. My entire body suffered jittery horror at the thought that even though I held her, I’d lost her.

I was too late.

The image of that f**king na**d bastard with his rancid c**k and the pitiful blonde girl beside Tess raped my mind.

My heart combusted with horror when I saw how similar Tess and the blonde looked. Their hair colour was so alike it tore my soul into pieces at the thought that I might’ve been too late. Too late to stop Tess being raped. Too late to stop her from suffering such tragedy again.

But I checked. When Tess passed out as I wrapped her snapped finger in some sheeting, I made sure to check she hadn’t been used. It killed me to invade her privacy, but I needed to know.

I had to know. I wouldn’t live with myself if she’d been violated again. Not after Lefebvre. Not after what I put her through. No one person should ever live through as much as Tess.

I wanted to howl to the bloody moon and shed my body in favour for something vicious with claws and fangs and no f**king conscience. I wanted to be the devil.

My mind dismembered from rational thought. I couldn’t think straight. I doubted I’d ever be sane again. The fact that Tess wasn’t bleeding between her legs helped me stay human for a little longer.

Tess weighed nothing in my arms as I carried her back the way we came. She’d lost so much weight she looked like a wraith. A blonde, delicate wraith with so many black bruises all over her she looked like a f**king domino.

My body wouldn’t stop trembling as every emotion went on hyper-drive. I wanted to kill. Fucking kill and kill and kill.

Tess thrashed, her face scrunched up with whatever hallucination she suffered. The track marks on her arms gave a vivid story of just what she’d endured.

I kept begging over and over. Her mind isn’t broken. Her mind isn’t broken. Once she detoxed, she’d be fine. I had to believe that.

My teeth clacked hard as I remembered what she’d said. She f**king talked to Brax. He lived in her mind, whispering to her, offering all sorts of comfort. Why didn’t she dream of me? I would give anything for her to think of me. To find solace in my memory.

You were never comforting. You were her master who played with her mind. How could she ever think of you fondly?

I couldn’t answer and it killed me all over again.

Coming to the fork in the corridor, I turned left, heading toward the large factory floor where we’d snuck inside.

We found the old fish-processing warehouse after a day of bribing the head of police. He’d had morals and refused for a time, but then we’d found out via other means that Smith paid off airport officials to transport his cargo.

I admit I went berserk at the thought of Tess flying away from me again. I grabbed the police chief by the throat and pulled out my trusty knife, all while Franco kept watch so we weren’t disturbed.

Faced with losing his life, the police bastard spilled his guts. He knew Smith. He knew enough to make me want to exterminate him, too. However, once he squealed, we walked. Someone else would kill him. I had other men I wanted to bleed.

My skin wouldn’t stop crawling as we entered the compound, moving in shadows and silence. When I found Tess, my heart spontaneously exploded into shards.

I’d never felt this way before. So weak. So afraid. So helpless.

The tightness around my throat squeezed harder as I looked at the unconscious woman in my arms. Blood oozed through the sheet around her finger, and I would never be able to erase the image of her bone sticking through her skin.

Her jaw was swollen and shadowed while other abuse marked her perfect skin. Every mark punctured a hole into my soul.

If only I never went to work. If only I was strong enough to be open and tell Tess I cared deeply for her. Be brave enough to share every secret and swear every promise.

If only I’d asked her for proof that she removed the f**king tracker.

Because of me the Red Wolverine saw through my act and took revenge on Tess. He managed to cut my balls off and bury me alive by taking the one thing I couldn’t live without.

I did this by being selfish. I wanted her too much to let her go, but at the same time she lived in constant danger thanks to me. And it would only get worse. The word was out that I killed cocksuckers who traded women. Death threats were coming and I knew I had to kill them, before they killed me.

I cradled Tess closer, willing my heat to enter her freezing form. Franco appeared, striding toward me, carrying the other blonde girl who had blood smeared on the insides of her thighs. She was white as a corpse and her eyes held an expression I knew all too well: the expression of no return. An empty shell where a soul had flown free to escape reality.

So many slaves had come to me with that look. They were the hardest to fix. To coax back into their bodies and not let them whither into nothingness as they lost the will to live.

Franco set his jaw and didn’t say a word.

I hugged Tess ever harder and strode toward the back of the warehouse. The whole place was black with filth and stank. Unused for years, it’d found a new purpose: trafficking.

Normally, if I found a place like this, I would dispatch Franco and a few of his best men. I would let them infiltrate and get their hands dirty. My profile as CEO was too well known to risk becoming a vigilante.

But that was over now. I could indulge in a little ‘kill the f**king ra**st.’

This time I would tear every motherfucker into pieces. I would dance in the cooling puddles of their blood as I burned the entire place to the ground. Q Mercer no longer existed. I didn’t care about my company or image.