Chapter 190 ~ The Only Angel We Had

Chapter 190 ~ The Only Angel We Had
{Daisy's POV}

Morning arrived with movement.

Volkov's men— mine, apparently, still a sentence I hadn't fully made peace with saying in my own head. They moved through the space with the kind of practiced efficiency that made the whole scene look lifted straight out of one of those war films DeLuca probably watched for fun. 

Vests went on in smooth, practiced motions, straps cinched tight across chests. Magazines slid into weapons with a series of crisp, mechanical clicks. Belts got fitted with pouches, knives, things I couldn't name and didn't especially want explained to me in detail.

I stood in the middle of all of it, entirely useless.

Apparently, gunfire accuracy was the one and only skill the universe had decided to hand me, and it had stopped generously right there. I didn't know how to load anything, strap anything, or identify a single piece of equipment beyond "that looks dangerous" and "that looks more dangerous."

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

Tessa appeared beside me, holding a gun at arm's length like it might detonate from proximity alone, a loose bullet balanced in her other palm.

"I don't know either," I admitted.

Which felt honest, and reasonable, and should have been the end of it.

Instead, some deeply misguided part of my brain decided this was a challenge worth accepting. I took the gun from her, examined it with the confidence of someone who had absolutely no business projecting confidence, and tried fitting the bullet into what I assumed was the correct opening.

It did not fit.

I tried another spot. Then another.

"Is it working?" Tessa asked.

I paused, privately conceding — to myself, silently, with my pride fully intact on the outside — that no, it was very much not working.

"I think the gun's the problem," I said instead. "It's bad."

Tessa nodded, satisfied.

"The piston," I added, for reasons I genuinely cannot defend. "The piston has issues."

She thanked me and walked off, apparently reassured, and I sighed, narrating privately to myself how deeply unfair it was that one lucky streak with a target had apparently convinced everyone around me that I understood anything else about firearms whatsoever.

Then I heard her.

"Daisy said the gun's bad," Tessa was telling one of the men several feet away. "The piston's got issues."

I lunged half a step toward her, some useless telekinetic instinct trying to yank the sentence back out of the air before it landed anywhere permanent. It didn't work. The man glanced toward me, and I turned away fast, mortified, ducking around a corner to escape my own catastrophic misinformation campaign.

Which was how I ended up nearly walking straight into Archer.

We locked eyes, and my whole body tensed on reflex. I spun to head the other direction immediately.

"Daisy."

I stopped. Turned back slowly, bracing for something I didn't know how to prepare for.

"You have nothing to worry about today," he said. "We're going to win this."

That was it. No follow-up, no lingering weight behind it.

"Yeah," I said, and left before either of us could turn it into anything more.

I slid past cluster after cluster of men as I went, each one offering a small, quiet bow as I passed. I'd gotten used to it, technically. I still hadn't gotten comfortable with it, which felt like an important distinction to hold onto.

I found DeLuca in another corner of the building, loading his own gear with the same easy competence as everyone else. He'd changed into something rougher than his usual composed look— a fitted tactical vest, worn at the edges in a way that suggested actual use rather than costume, fingerless gloves, a holster strapped low against his thigh. 

He looked like danger dressed for a job interview it was overqualified for.

I crossed to him and reached up, straightening his collar without really thinking about it.

"Believe me," he said, watching me do it, "no one's going to be paying attention to how I'm dressed today."

"I know." My hand stayed on his collar anyway. "But you should always look good."

"Don't I already?"

Heat rushed straight up my neck, because I understood exactly what he was doing, and it was working anyway.

"Are those grenades?" I asked, abruptly changing the subject and gesturing at absolutely anything else in the vicinity.

"That wasn't actually an answer to my question."

I stared at him, cheeks still burning.

"I think you already know the answer, DeLuca."

"Obviously." A faint smirk. "I've known since the day I was born."

"You're insufferable." I sighed. "Fine. Yes. You look good. That's what you wanted to hear. Happy now?"

He considered that with mock gravity.

"Not really. I've heard it from plenty of people. You saying it just barely moves the needle. Maybe adds a solid zero-point-zero-one percent."

I smacked his arm, and he shifted, entirely unbothered, staring back at me with the calm, steady warmth that had somehow become one of my favorite things in the entire world.

We both smiled for a second.

Then, slowly, the air shifted into something heavier.

"How confident are we about this?" I asked after a moment.

DeLuca turned to look at me properly, something almost amused crossing his face.

"You're really asking me that?"

Fair point. Confidence was basically his baseline setting, the way breathing was mine. But I needed the actual words out loud, not just the smirk that came standard with him.

"How confident," I repeated.

"Confident." He shrugged, returning to his gear. "We have more men than they do. We don't even need confidence for this one."

Cool. Great. Very reassuring, from the man currently strapping a knife to his own leg like it was a fashion accessory.

I let that settle before moving to the question actually sitting underneath it.

"And are we sure about this?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your father."

He went still for half a second, just enough that I caught it, and when he spoke again his voice carried a new, careful stiffness.

"I'm sure," he said. "He won't be easy to kill. He taught me everything I know. But I won't hesitate. I'll kill him. For being a monster. For taking away the only angel we ever had."

I didn't have a joke ready for that. I didn't want one, either. Something in his voice had gone somewhere I couldn't follow him into, somewhere that made my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with me. I already had my answer, clearer now than it had ever been, even though some part of me had known it all along. Knowing it that plainly still worried me. 

Revenge always sounded simple right up until the person carrying it out actually reached the end of it. And there was still Nico somewhere in the middle of this, once his closest friend, which meant this wasn't even a clean two-person tragedy. It was a three-person one, minimum.

I didn't ask anything else.

"All right," DeLuca said, straightening. "Let's move."

His voice carried across the space, and every scattered conversation folded itself down into motion at the sound of it, like he'd flipped a switch nobody else could see.

I turned the other way, toward my mother.

I found her seated where we'd left her, and I crouched in front of her, letting her hold my face between her hands like I was still eight years old and this was just an ordinary school morning.

"You look tense," she said.

"I am." I met her eyes. "But I'll be safe."

She smiled, warm and certain. "I know you will."

I appreciated that confidence, genuinely, but it also threw me a little— I'd braced myself for worry, tears, maybe a dramatic last-minute plea to reconsider my whole life choices. Instead I got calm. Actual, functional calm, from a woman who twelve hours ago had drop-kicked a man into unconsciousness. She answered the unasked question before I could form it, her gaze sliding past me toward DeLuca.

"I've seen enough to know he won't let anything happen to you."

I nodded, understanding completely.

"You'll be fine too, right, Mom?"

"Yes. We will be."

"Right," I said, in a tone that apparently gave away exactly how many follow-up questions I was still sitting on, because she caught it instantly.

"You still owe me those explanations," I added. "About what happened at Volkov's base. The whole secret-assassin thing."

"Of course," she said. "After we get a physician to look at my wrist."

I glanced down and actually saw it properly for the first time— swollen, held at an angle that made the break obvious the second I stopped avoiding looking at it. Between that and how thin her strength had worn overnight, it made total sense why she wasn't coming. It still didn't make me feel great about leaving her behind.

Which left just the three of us heading out: me, Aria, and Archer.

Aria made sense on paper — skilled, useful, exactly the kind of asset you want along when things might get ugly. My own reasons ran messier. Partly, there wasn't a version of today where anyone successfully talked me into sitting this one out while DeLuca walked toward his own father with a gun. 

I needed eyes on him. I needed proof, physical and immediate, that he came back out the other side. Saying that out loud made me sound unhinged. I stood by it anyway. And partly, it was practical. Volkov's men followed me now, technically, on paper, in bowing-and-scraping fact, but their loyalty toward DeLuca hadn't fully settled after years of him standing as their rival. My presence kept that chain of command pointed exactly where it needed to point.

Everyone else would stay back, guarded by the men DeLuca had left behind, all of them now at least minimally trained not to shoot themselves. He knew exactly how Nico thought— cornered, outnumbered, hunting for any advantage he could find. And now that Salvatore was fully in the mix too, both of them would be playing smarter than usual. Hence the whole plan, built exactly the way it had been built.

I hugged my mother tightly, and she hugged me back just as hard.

Rising, I let my gaze sweep the room one last time — Nathan, glaring at me from his corner; Mabel, buried in her phone like it might finally deliver good news; Tessa, still hunched over that same gun, still trying to force a bullet into a chamber that was never, under any circumstance, going to accept it.

Tessa looked up and caught my eye, and we crossed the space to hug briefly.

"Be safe," she said.

I nodded, already turning to follow the others heading outside.

"There's no piston in the gun," I muttered as I passed her.

She sputtered something confused and indignant behind me, but I was already moving, already out the door before she could turn that sentence into a real question.

Outside, the air held a different kind of tension entirely; tight, rough, edged with the specific weight of knowing this might genuinely be the last push. Everyone climbed into their vehicles with quiet, deliberate focus. My heart raced as I crossed to DeLuca's car and slid in beside him.

The engines roared to life.



We drove for several minutes, tension thick enough to feel physical, weapons resting ready across laps and against seats. Once we arrived, there wouldn't be time for hesitation. Salvatore and Nico had no idea we were coming. That was supposed to be the entire advantage. I kept repeating it to myself like a small, private prayer.

DeLuca had explained it to me earlier— his father had abandoned the mansion, relocated somewhere new, presumably to regroup with Nico while they figured out their next move. Their sources had tracked the new location down anyway. We were minutes away now.

Every minute that passed pulled the tension tighter, like someone slowly turning a screw somewhere behind my ribs.

We took a final turn, speed climbing, ready to hit the place hard and fast. The structure came into view ahead of us; a squat, windowless warehouse set back from the road, ringed by chain-link fencing that had seen better decades, floodlights mounted along the roofline like something built to survive exactly this kind of visit.

The cars skidded to a stop in front of it.

Doors flew open, everyone dropping out in smooth, practiced motion. DeLuca moved first, gun already raised, every step deliberate in a way that made me feel, briefly, like the least useful person on the property despite technically being the one everyone answered to. The rest of the men fell into position around him instantly, disciplined, silent.

"Stay here," DeLuca told me. "Torres has you."

Then he was moving, leading the main group forward while Torres and a handful of others stayed back with me.

Panic built in me the second the group disappeared through the entrance, dread climbing with every passing second of silence.

I couldn't stay put.

I knew DeLuca hadn't wanted this. I moved anyway, walking forward, Torres and the others falling into step around me without argument, everyone's guns raised, everyone's nerves stretched thin. Any moment now, gunfire should have started. 

But even with the advantage of surprise fully on our side, dread sat heavy and immovable in my chest, the kind that doesn't listen to logic no matter how good the odds supposedly are.

Nothing happened.

The silence stretched, unbearable, worse somehow than gunfire would have been. At least gunfire tells you something. Silence just sits there, letting your imagination fill in every possible worst version of events on its own. Confusion tangled with the fear until I couldn't separate the two anymore.

I stood there, watching the entrance, Torres and the others tense and still around me, all of us apparently competing to see who could hold their breath the longest without meaning to.

Then figures emerged from the opening.

Some of the men first, expressions unreadable. Then DeLuca followed a moment later, gun lowered at his side, walking toward us with a look on his face I couldn't decode no matter how hard I tried, and I'd gotten fairly good at reading him by now.

He closed the distance between us.

"There's no one here."