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EMRICK
Now…
No matter how much I had, I always wanted more.
My empire had grown over the years, and I was well on my way to running almost half of this city’s underground crime network. Maybe I could have put my efforts into politics, becoming the mayor and moving up from there, but it seemed a waste of time. The real power lay within these not-so-secret networks which existed under everyone’s noses. All citizens knew they were here, even the cops, but it was too big now, and drugs and prostitution ran this city, so I simply took my slice.
Then worked my way toward owning the whole damn city.
Because this was what I was good at, this isallI was good at. I wanted people to grovel at my feet, for everyone who said it wasn’t for me to decide who lived and died to realize they were at my mercy. They may have been right, but now I had that power, I owned it, and Icouldmake that decision if I wanted to.
They feared me, my name, and everyone who worked for me. Using anger, fear, and hatred coupled with having nothing left to lose, I had carved out a section of the world I could control and claimed it as my own, doing what was necessary to retain and grow my empire.
There was nothing inside me now except the darkness—an empty void where my soul used to reside. I don’t regret anything I did—regret is for the weak. Those men deserved to die, the first humans I had killed, and it was my right to take their lives. But afterward, I had no purpose, no direction, and found myself wandering the city getting into trouble, taking my rage out on anyone who looked at me wrong.
Until I found the club.
Urban was one of the largest nightclubs in the city, and now it wasmynightclub, the place from where I ran most of my business. The second I walked through those doors almost a decade ago, it felt like a second chance. I could almost feel the power throbbing from the place—the combination of rich fucks and people who would do anything for a buck intrigued me.
I wanted it, all of it.
At the time, I had already formed a small group compiled of men working underneath me and made some cash through drugs, but the taste of power had me wanting more. Every fearful look I received from people satiated the black space inside me only a little bit, and I neededmore.I’d like to say I had started as a bartender and worked my way up through the ranks or I’d saved money and bought the place, a real motivational story.
If I can do it, you can too!
But no, and my lips curled into a sneer when I thought about it. I had simply offered the owner a choice—the club or his life and the lives of his family. Once he had lost two fingers and an ear, I think he understood that I meant business. He’d shot me, but it didn’t stop me from coming at him, and from there, he had argued no more, signing over the club, staff, and consequently, his share in the world of crime. He had spent decades building up an empire, and wasn’t keen to let it go. Murphy was a tough fucker, and I respected him for it.
But I was stronger, faster, and had nothing to lose.
How he expected to stay in his position with a weakness that was a family—a family which could be threatened or murdered—was beyond me. The one weak spot I had was already taken from me, ironically, by Murphy’s men. If I had known who he was when I took his business from him, he wouldn’t have lived beyond my office door. It didn’t take long to find his button, his weak spot, and while his reputation had preceded him as much as mine does now, he didn’t want his children to meet me.
Don’t blame him. Smart man.
Anyone with an ounce of logic knows you don’t get into work like this if you have something to lose. Without any connections, I’m unplugged from the world, nothing to fear, and that makes me dangerous to my enemies.
Once I realized the connection between Emily and Murphy, I sought to kill him.
But someone had beaten me to it.
I had a good suspicion about who, but I didn’t care enough about Murphy to look into it further.
That was eight years ago, after ending my self-destructive binge once I fell and decided to focus my energies. I lost my wings, so what more could He do to me now? Fuck all. God barely controlled me as an angel, and as one of the fallen, I was beyond His reach.
I’d lost everything, everything I loved and held dear as well as the bond with my brothers and sisters. When I woke up the morning after the act with my wings gone and large permanent scars on my back, something in me changed. Whatever was left of the angel vanished at that moment, and any loyalty or faith I had was gone. I was new—not better, much worse, in fact—I was different.
When there’s no going back, you only look toward the next day.
Those fucking scars, scars that no matter how many times I tried to get them tattooed over, no matter how much I yelled at the tattoo artist to press harder, they would simply not take the ink. I’d be forever left with the reminder of my falling, and I supposed bitterly, that was the point.
Mostly my empire ran itself, and I only needed to intervene when shit hit the fan to remind them who was in charge and make sure through fear there was still power. Otherwise, I was free to engage in whatever I wanted. While I was mortal now, I retained my celestial strength, and from what I could judge from my slow, almost unperceivable aging, a certain level of extended lifespan. I’d even retained most of my accelerated healing abilities. Although I noticed as time went by, it took longer for me to heal, part of the punishment for murder, I guessed.
How this was supposed to teach me not to murder, I didn’t know. I’d fallen as far as I could go, so what’s to stop me from continuing to kill?
Slowly, I was becoming mortal, the time it was taking for the process to complete was a small mercy. One day I would die, so I might as well make the most of it.
My chosen pleasure for tonight lay under me on her stomach, squirming against the binds holding her wrists behind her back and the ties that clamped her ankles together.
Helpless. Beautiful.
