Chapter (Two Hundred) Twenty Four: Pupils

Angela felt her spine straighten at the sound of her boss's voice thundering from the foyer of Ernesto's home. He was calling his brother's name, shouting it and every time his voice rang out, he sounded more and more infuriated.

Hide, her brain said to her. She had no idea why. She wasn't doing anything wrong, just staying at a friend's home. But there was something in Damian's voice that triggered a visceral fear, an incessant need to cower and shrink behind the chair she sat on. It reminded her of when her mother's past lovers would storm into their old house smelling of beer. Her mother always dated the same type of people; men who enabled her drinking habits or those that were alcoholics themselves. She had been ten the first time she watched one of them hit her mother. The man hadn't been allowed into their house again but it didn't stop him from trying though.