Page 15 of Angel

Angel immediately snapped out of her shocked and immobile state. She started pulling on her hands bound to the light fixture. The U-shaped fixture though did not give. She was tall enough that her feet were on the ground but not tall enough where she could lift her hands over the fixture to get herself loose. Her only option was to break the rope. Angel let out a vicious, snarling sound as she pulled and pulled. The rope, though, held strong. She kicked towards Snakeskin but he was too far away for her legs to reach.

Eventually, Angel stopped. Bree saw she was out of breath but her mind was still working. She kept looking around for options.

Bree sat immobile as she watched Snakeskin approach Angel from the side. She immediately kicked out at him again, but he caught her boot and twisted her leg. Bree flinched as Angel cried out in pain. She hoped her leg wasn’t broken. They were already down a pair of legs between the two of them.

If somehow Angel got free, she needed her legs. At the very least, Bree was light enough that Angel could pick her up and run with her.

Eyepatch was still too close to her. Bree didn’t dare pull out her phone yet. As much as she hated it, Bree needed both Eyepatch and Snakeskin’s full attention on Angel so she could send her SOS message.

Bree started to shake. She knew what that full attention would mean for Angel. Tears escaped her eyes as she squeezed them closed. Bile threatened to rise and she feared her Reuben sandwich might make a second appearance.

“I never understood letting women think they have an equal standing in this world.” Snakeskin continued to bend Angel’s leg between them as he reached forward and gripped her chin. Bree saw how tight his grip was, but Angel did not flinch away. “You are not made to be equal. You are made to serve men. You are not strong. You are weak, sniveling, and pathetic. Steel was a fool to let you into his club. Did he honestly think King was going to let him insult him and not pay the consequences?”

Eyepatch started forward. He was to the side and in front of Bree now. Just a little more, she thought. If she was on his other side, she’d risk pulling her phone out. The way he was standing, though, she assumed she was still in his peripheral vision.

However, she also saw that he had a gun at the small of his back. Maybe there was a way she could get ahold of that.

Snakeskin’s hand let go of Angel’s leg. She winced but did not cry out. As Snakeskin leaned closer to her, Angel hocked a loogie in his face.

He flinched back, frantically wiping at his eyes. “Bitch!” he shouted out and then backhanded Angel.

Her head slammed back against the brick wall and Bree saw blood start to flow down from Angel’s nose. For one terrifying moment, Bree feared the blow had killed Angel. Her head lolled limply to the side.

Then the most cynical laugh that Bree had ever heard rose up from Angel. She stood straighter and, when she smiled, Bree saw blood coating her teeth. Angel spat the blood onto the floor at Snakeskin’s feet. Bree noticed for the first time that the man was wearing snakeskin boots. Angel’s blood splattered onto the coppery scales.

“Big words coming from such a little man. Is this the only way you can get your rocks off? By tying up women? You’re nothing if they can fight back.”

Snakeskin punched Angel in the stomach. She gasped and spluttered, but she stood strong. Snakeskin gripped her black hair, which she’d started to grow out over the past year that Bree had known her. He forced Angel’s face to tip up towards him. “I’m not so stupid that your words are going to make me let you go.”

She smiled widely. The crimson outline on her white teeth made it seem all the more menacing. “Because you know that I can take you? Who’s weak now?”

Snakeskin dropped his grip on her hair. Rather than hit her again, though, he put his hands at her button-up shirt and ripped it open, revealing Angel’s black sports bra. Bree let out a real gasp of fear.

Angel’s eyes landed on her, and the hardness in them softened. “Don’t watch, baby. Whatever happens, don’t watch.”

“No,” Snakeskin countered. “Watch. Watch what your future will look like. Because once we’re done with her,” he turned and looked appraisingly over Bree’s body, “we’ll move on to you.”

Bree gagged. She was willing to survive and fight for a lot of things…but not that. If Bree was raped again… She turned and threw up her Reuben sandwich.

No, she would not survive being raped again.

Both Eyepatch and Snakeskin found her reaction to his threat amusing. Bree was still wiping her mouth of vomit when she heard the telling clank of a buckle being opened. Visions of the past threatened to overtake her.

“The past can’t hurt you,” Uncle Jumper told her numerous times. “The past has a way of taking over your mind. Don’t let it. Push it away, bury it. Only the present can harm you if you allow the past to take over.”

Bree tried, she really did, but the horrors of her past were replaying now in her present. She didn’t need to think about her past when all she had to do was open her eyes and see it happening all over again.

The back of her chair vibrated. She heard Angel’s shouting as if it was coming from the next room over. It sounded displaced, distant.

It took several precious seconds for Bree to realize what was vibrating the back of her chair. Her phone. It was vibrating under her bottom, but she couldn’t feel it there. She could only feel the lesser vibrations on her back.

Bree looked up. Both Snakeskin and Eyepatch were approaching Angel. The fierce look on her face told Bree that they would not take her easily. Still, she could not fight forever with her hands tied as they were. Additionally, neither man had realized yet that they already had the one thing that would force Angel’s compliance: Bree.

She knew her mother. All they had to do was threaten Bree, with pain or rape, and Angel would comply. She would take anything, do anything, to spare Bree that fate again.

Bree had to act quickly. Angel would run out of stamina or the two men would realize there was an easier way to get what they wanted. She blindly reached under her butt. Bree had no way of knowing where the phone was, only that it was there.

Finally, she pulled it out. Thankfully, it had stopped vibrating. Her body had suppressed the vibrations but, if it went off again, the men might hear it.

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