Chapter 172: A Tailored Half-Truth
When her face twisted in pure displeasure at his words, he quickly added, "I mean, she was pretending to be you. So, in my mind, the woman I was looking at was you, not her."
"What? So you actually let her seduce you?" Aliana shot back, her tone dropping into a dangerous low. "But didn’t you just say you had already confirmed your suspicions back in the car?"
Gavriel couldn’t help but let a smile settle on his face. It was the exact smile that brought his dimple into view, stunning Aliana for a brief moment.
’Gods, that damned dimple!’ she cursed silently.
One of Gavriel’s arms slid up her thigh before settling around her waist as he decided to stop teasing her.
"I almost strangled her," he admitted.
"You did what?" Her eyes widened in surprise.
He gave her a slow, small nod, and all traces of humour instantly vanished from his face.
"Yes. There are a few things in this world I will never tolerate, and deceit sits right at the top of that list."
Aliana absorbed his words, but she didn’t feel a single shred of fear hearing him confess to violence. If the positions were reversed, she would have done the exact same thing.
Giving him a subtle nod of understanding, she lightly cleared her throat before pressing further. "What happened after that?"
"Cillian interrupted me before I could choke the life out of her, and we demanded to know where you were," Gavriel replied, offering a carefully tailored half-truth.
He intentionally omitted the darker details of how he had ripped her arm off before using his powers on her to get the truth out.
"She gave us the address of the abandoned dock, and we wasted no time coming to get you."
Aliana fell silent for a few moments, processing the timeline before she asked, "What happened to that woman afterwards?"
"You don’t have to worry about her anymore. She has been taken care of," Gavriel replied smoothly.
Her brows knitted together. "What exactly do you mean by that?"
"Just know that I don’t forget or ever forgive certain things, Aliana. My way of punishing people is not something you would want to know. So let’s just say she will be locked up for a very long time and will never appear in front of you again."
She thought maybe he had handed her over to the police, but the chilling weight behind his words sent a cold shiver running straight down Aliana’s spine.
For a brief moment, she caught a dangerous glint in his eyes, one so cold and murderous that it felt as though she were staring at an entirely different person.
But Gavriel caught himself the moment he noticed her watching him carefully.
Choosing to distract her, he asked, "What else do you want to know?"
Aliana fell silent once more, processing everything before finally asking with deep hesitation, "What... what state was I in when you found me?"
The question brought their conversation to an abrupt halt.
Her words had dragged Gavriel back to the haunting memory of finding her lying in a pool of blood, a memory he had no desire to revisit.
Even now, he was baffled by the condition in which he had found her in that shipping container. He still didn’t know how much Aliana had seen or what exactly she had gone through.
Careful not to reveal too much, he decided to test the waters first.
"I found you unconscious," he said quietly.
Aliana and Gavriel locked eyes.
He reached up, gently cupping her cheek with his hand as he asked in a quiet, tender voice, "Tell me... what do you remember, baby?"
Gavriel noticed how her eyes instantly clouded with wariness, as if her entire being were recoiling at the mere thought of revisiting the ordeal. Her lips parted to speak, but closed just as quickly, as though she were unsure where to even begin.
Reading her mind, he asked quietly, "Why don’t you start by telling me what happened when you went to the washroom?"
Aliana nodded, thinking that would be the easier place to start and started telling him scene by scene. She suddenly paused before asking, "Did you know that the woman who introduced herself as Diaz was actually Diana?"
Gavriel’s brows drew together, not because he was surprised by the information itself, but because he was surprised that Aliana knew it.
How had she figured that out?
Had Diana revealed it to her? Had she also told Aliana about her true identity as a demoness?
At this point, Gavriel felt a mild headache coming on. Too many people were involved, and he had no idea how much of their world had already been exposed to Aliana.
Taking a sharp breath, he decided he needed to extract every single answer.
"I didn’t notice her at the party. But how do you know that? Did she tell you who she was?"
Aliana shook her head.
"No, she didn’t. She kept insisting she was just Jacob’s friend, but the more she spoke, the more she sounded like a jilted ex. I ignored her and turned to leave when she revealed..." She paused, looking at Gavriel intently while her fingers curled into the fabric of his robe, "...that you would go back to her, just like you did a couple of nights ago."
The frown on Gavriel’s face deepened at her words.
He knew he had made a reckless mistake by seeking Diana out in a fit of unstable emotions a few days back. He just had not anticipated it coming back to haunt him so quickly, or that the woman would weaponise that information to spite Aliana.
Aliana released a quiet sigh and continued, "Honestly, Gav, I’m glad you told me about you visiting her that night. If I had heard that firsthand from her without knowing the truth from you, I know for a fact we wouldn’t be sitting here like this right now."
Gavriel remained silent, mentally adding yet another form of torture to Diana’s already long list of punishments for this single piece of information.
Aliana, completely unaware of his dark thoughts, continued speaking.
"And your ex is a psycho, I must add. That woman attacked me out of nowhere. I mean, I understand that she must be upset to see you get engaged to me, but resorting to caveman-like violence is just ridiculous."
She abruptly trailed off as she felt the temperature in the massive room plummet by several degrees. When she looked back at Gavriel, she saw how his expression had darkened.
"Gav?" she called him, confused.
"What exactly did she do to you?" His voice came out terrifyingly low, but she could feel the razor-sharp edge behind it, like a thin layer of ice hiding a catastrophic storm beneath.
Aliana didn’t know what had put him in such a state, nor did she want to push him further.
So she told him everything. Everything Diana had done, from physically attacking her to the cruel words she’d hurled at her before she lost consciousness.
What Aliana didn’t realise was that Gavriel was quietly committing every detail to memory, ensuring that every ounce of pain inflicted upon her would be repaid a thousandfold.
After that, her voice grew much lower, hesitant as she began recounting what had happened inside the container. She despised the memory, but she didn’t want to live in fear of it anymore, so she forced herself to tell him everything Jacob had said and done just to get it over with.
By the time she reached the part where he had forced himself on her, Aliana suddenly paused, her brows drawing together.
Meanwhile, Gavriel was busy keeping Bellarios on a tight leash. The task was proving harder with each passing second, because the sheer, murderous rage he felt toward Jacob was far worse than his fury toward Diana.
Both of them fell utterly silent for two entirely different reasons, until a sudden, rapid cracking sound echoed sharply through the room.
