Page 73 of Tear Me Down (Descent to Darkness Trilogy #2)
She looks up at the ceiling with teary eyes, and flashes those canines in a genuine smile… My little wolf… So happy and free, completely unaware of what’s about to happen to her…
When she sharply turns her head to the door, a chill runs down my spine.
“Damien?” Her sweet voice rings out, bringing tears to my eyes, but I blink them away quickly to see clearly. As much as this is killing me, I can’t miss a single detail, and as torturous as this will be, I’ll watch it a hundred times to be sure I get every element.
She takes a step toward the door, grasping onto the handle with excitement, only to halt, making it clear that her instinctual sense of danger kicks in.
She quickly walks to the bathroom, briefly stepping out of view before the sound of our shower running fills the feed.
Fuck, she’s so smart. I then watch as she walks out of the bathroom and looks around the room, clearly trying to decide where to hide before she walks toward the door and slips into the small cut out in the wall behind it .
They enter the room, and fear immediately overtakes her features. Her eyes are wide, and she covers that beautiful mouth with a shaky hand… Three men walk in, but she doesn’t know there’s more…
Quickly and quietly, she slips out from behind the door and starts to walk out while their backs are turned, when a man appears and back hands her across the face, which sends her spinning to the floor…
I can feel my body starting to tremble, and the rage bubble underneath, but I can’t stop watching.
I can’t look away… She scrambles as she tries to crawl away, but her feet slip out from under her as he grabs her ankle and pulls her closer.
“DAMIEN!” she screams, and her high-pitched wail brings literal pain to my chest. My whole body shudders to the sound, and the agony is unbearable…
She called out for me… and I wasn’t there…
her screams did nothing but fill a void, and they either fell on deaf or dead ears.
I watch as he mounts himself on top of her and tries to wrangle her in.
“GET OFF OF ME! YOU FUCKING VIPER!” She then manages to kick him off of her, and as the others lunge for her, she acts, taking one of our lamps and swinging it with all of her might.
It smashes into one’s head, and then she quickly grabs a shard and stabs a different assailant with the piece.
Her fight is valiant, and that force I always knew her to be rises to the occasion, but it’s just not enough.
I continue watching, without ever blinking, as she then scrambles to her feet—only for one of the other men to yank her back by her hair, causing her feet to flail out in front of her by the brute force, and she screams again.
She's almost immediately silenced as he smashes her head into our dresser, and she instantly goes limp.
.. I shakily back away from the laptop as he roughly throws her limp body over his shoulder, and watch as blood makes its way down her face…
“Get the fuck out…” I shakily command as my sight begins to un-focus and back again with the erratic pulse coursing through me.
“D…”
“GET THE FUCK OUT!” My vision goes black, and everything is thrown into shade, covering the world around me in darkness.
I begin ripping every tube and wire out of my body as Carter grabs Serena and runs out, knowing that nothing and no one is safe from me anymore.
As my chest heaves with heavy breaths, I can feel the pain from before try to break through the wall of my psyche, but I won’t allow it to.
I can’t get to her like this…
Toughen up you worthless shit! SHE NEEDS YOU!
I jerk my fist back and slam it into everything in my vicinity, not spending a single moment registering the physical pain.
The glass cabinets, the countertop, the heart monitor that doesn’t seem to shut the fuck up, it all falls victim to my rage.
I release a feral roar as I continue my rampage, throwing medical supplies and the debris from my attack around the room.
My soul has been taken from me.
Any ounce of humanity is stripped from me .
They’ll feel my wrath and beg for the Devil to take my place.
Each circle of hell will be brought to the earth’s surface, and every inch of this pathetic world will burn until she’s in my arms again…
This is Hugo’s doing… The message at the warehouse was an indication of that.
He took my girl, and unknowingly our baby…
I can’t wait to tear that piece of shit apart.
If he feared what I would do to him before this treachery, he won’t be able to imagine it now.
I will dive into the deepest parts of the underworld to ensure the maximum sentence for his crimes.
I need to leave. Feeling like a caged animal only solidifies my dark divinity.
Let me out. Let me go. I’ll find her. Our connection will lead me back to her.
I can hear Zeke and Alex argue outside while Serena’s cries play in the background.
They’ll try to stop me, force me to come up with a plan and not act until it’s too late.
They’re in the way. They’ll only slow me down. Just let me go. LET ME GO!
“DAMIEN!”
Her screams ring through my mind, echoing again and again in a tortuous loop. Every whimper, every pained cry will forever play like a broken record, a playlist of my failures to sound out as a performance.
“GET OFF OF ME, YOU FUCKING VIPER!”
Something about that emits a tingle on the back of my neck.
Viper? I’ve never heard that insult come out of her mouth before, and she’s said many…
Why would she say that? I go over the moment in my mind.
The man was mostly covered, and there isn’t a single detail that I can pick up from that far away besides his height and build.
I can’t even pick out his eye color from that angle…
But she could.
That’s why she chose those words, because she’s a genius. A beautiful genius.
I reach into the broken lower cabinet to retrieve my clothes and quickly get dressed. There are holes with singed edges all over the tactical suit, but it’s better than this hospital gown. I need to be ready, and as long as this covers my dick and can hold my holster, nothing else matters.
Pain caresses my back and into my chest as hope begins to stir, but I immediately push it away, refusing to feel it just yet. I can’t right now. I can endure it when she’s safe. When they’re safe…
I snap my head to the door to see Carter inch his way in and take a horrified look at the damage I caused.
“Get Serena in here now! And pull up that fucking video again!” I demand, but she walks in the moment I say her name and was clearly waiting right outside.
She may not like me that much, but she loves Ashia enough to stick around this time, and at least that’s some common ground we can work with.
Carter pulls up the video and I fast forward it to her horrified insult.
Playing it back, she flinches at Ashia’s pain. “Have you ever heard that before? ”
“What? My best friend’s terrified screams? Not in a long time!”
“No, not that. What she says.” I rewind it again and she listens a little more closely.
“Viper? What does that mean?”
“Carter, scan their bodies. Look for anything on them that looks like a snake. We don’t have time for facial recognition.
Tell whoever has that man’s body to search for the same thing.
Tattoos, jewelry, fucking scars. Anything,” I command, and he starts frantically typing and moving his fingers like a mad man when Zeke and Alex walk back in.
“What’s going o—holy shit…” Zeke says as he looks around at my destruction. Alex doesn’t say anything, but the shock on his face tells me everything I need to know.
“Damien, your hands,” Serena says to me, and I look down to see the blood pouring from my knuckles. Glass shards stick out almost everywhere from my fingertips to my knuckles, but I don’t feel an ounce of it.
“I don’t give a shit.”
“You’ve lost enough blood, and you’re going to need your hands.” She starts rummaging through the destruction and pulls out supplies to pick out the glass and bandage them.
“There!” Carter shouts and points to the screen, gesturing to when the three men first walked into our bedroom. I look at the screen to see an enlarged frame from the video, showing off the man’s neck tattoo. “The one that grabbed her has one, too.”
“That’s my girl…” I let out a relieved breath, and shake my head, needing to focus.
“Get Tony on the fucking phone! Send this to him and tell him to run through his database until he finds a match! And find any other markings on these motherfuckers! Send it to my dad, tell him to call his friend at the FED’s office, and then run it through our systems. They’re not Dust, but they’re someone. ”
“We’ve got three of the Dust goons from the warehouse at the Attic, D,” Zeke says confidently.
“Hugo?”
“There’s no sign of him, and so far these three are hard to crack. Ezra offered to try, but I figured you’d want the honors.”
I feel another wave of rage run through me, and thankfully, Serena finishes wrapping up my hand at just the right time.
“Take me there.” I push past them all and walk right out of the room, focusing all my rage into my soon-to-be next three victims.