Rex...

Nooooooooo! No, this can't be happening! Shit, no! No! No! No! Not my Angel, please not my Angel!

With unrepentant fury and dangerous strength, the need to hurt my father is all that navigates me. Dragging him off Angel, I brutally throw him through the air. He slams against the dresser, sliding down against it in a startled daze. The will to kill him is now all I can think about, but glancing down at a lifeless Angel, makes the need to help her so much stronger. Checking that my father is remaining safely away from her, I rush to Angel's motionless and face down body. Waves of painful nausea actually rip through me as I shakily place my hand on her back.

I'm afraid.

I'm afraid to touch her.

I'm afraid to move her.

With fear pumping around my body, I pull my mobile from out of my back pocket and dial 999 with my trembling fingers.

"999, which emergency service do you need?" An operator soon asks.

Stroking Angel's back, I quickly reply. "I need an ambulance and the police, my fiancée has been attacked by my father." My desperate eyes despicably slide across to him, where he is groggily still in a pathetic heap beside the dresser.

"Is your fiancée breathing?"

The operators question drags my murderous stare away from my father, to focus only on Angel. Leaning right over her, I can see that she is breathing, but it's slow and irregular. I am trained in advanced first aid, so I know her breathing isn't a good sign. "She is, but it's slow and irregular." I nervously state, now reaching for her bloodied wrist to check her pulse. Oh God, it's so weak. "Please hurry!" My calm composure is slipping away from me fast. All my first aid skills seem desperately lost on me. I just keep looking down at Angel, praying that she will make it.

"Do you have an address?"

The operators next question completely throws me. I just can't think straight, right now. Angel's address, that seems desperately lost on me too. Anxiously rubbing my cheek, I angrily try to remember her address. "Um, it's Cherry Lane, Larkhall, Bath." What's the fucking number, Rex? Think! Just fucking think! The more I seem to think, the more my mind goes hopelessly blank. "Uh, I think it might be 17 Cherry Lane?" I keep frantically thinking. "Yeah, I think it's number 17." Saying it again, confirms it to myself that I do have the right house number. "Just please hurry." Stroking Angel, just needing her to know that I am still with her, I feel myself becoming alarmingly overwhelmed with what has happened to her. The woman I love, has been brutally attacked by my own flesh and blood. The man who helped bring me into this world, has just tried taking the love of my life from out of mine. "You need to hurry with the police as well, I think my father intends on hurting me too. Please hurry." I lie to the operator, pretending to sound scared as I lay the deceitful foundation for the plan that fiercely rages inside of my head as I firmly focus on my disgusting excuse for a father. "Are they on their way?" I quietly enquire with my predatory eyes still fixed only on him.

"Both emergency services are now on their way." The operator quickly tells me.

"Thank you." Then I hang up and slowly stand with a dangerous calmness now flowing inside of me. I can't leave things just as they are. Help is on its way for Angel, so I need to quickly finish things with my father before that help arrives. Without saying a word and without really thinking things through, I am striding towards the object of my vengeance and furiously lifting him up and dragging him across the bedroom floor. Holding his contorted face, I force my father to look at Angel. "I want you to look at what you've done." Holding him still and speaking through savage, clenched teeth, I say what needs to be said. "For what you've just done, you are going to pay." Throwing him in the doorway, I then pin him down hard to the floor. The first punch, I am very much aware of. All the others, I am not. My released rage had me firmly in its formidable and powerful grip. The more I punched my father, the more fuel for my fury I had. Over and over, my vengeful fist smashed down into his disgusting face. I wanted to obliterate every bone within that face of his whilst feeding my fury's insatiable hunger.

"Oh my God!" A distant and terrified voice soon penetrates my unrelenting rage, forcing me to alarmingly look up. Angel's horrified sister stands in the hallway, wild-eyed and scared. "Where's Angel?" She fearfully asks, because she hasn't yet seen the nauseating sight of her sister just on the other side of the door.

With my breathing erratic and my bloodied fist clenched so very tight, I slowly stand. "My father, he's attacked her." The words are expelled from my mouth without emotion or any feeling; sounding completely detached from my savage reality.

Faith now looks frantic as she stares down at the sight of my father, then she starts madly crying out. "Angel? Angel?" Anxiously walking around my lifeless father, she comes deeper into the bedroom and deeper into my despair. When she sees her sister lying on the floor, Faith falls to her knees. "Angel? Oh God. No. Angel? It's me." Just like I was, she is afraid to touch or to move her, afraid that she might hurt her even more. Sobbing loudly, Faith looks right at me. "Have you called an ambulance?"

With tears in my eyes, I numbly nod. "They're on their way." Gravity no longer has hold of me. It's as though it has suddenly left me to fend for myself, so I suddenly crumble to my knees. My strength and vengeance has also left me, because I now feel weak and in senseless shock. "He has destroyed us again." My detached voice comes at the very same time that my detached gaze settles on Angel. "He has done it again." Even my voice has become numb. I can no longer think or feel, because it all now feels so hopelessly numb.

I know that Faith is crying and muttering loudly beside me, and that Angel is still unconscious and that my father has been beaten into his deserved unconsciousness—I am aware of all of that, yet I remain quietly numb. Wrapped up in my numbness, I am soon introduced to my guilt. The woman I love is slipping away from me because of my own father. I was there when he had told her he was watching her. I knew that he had scared her, yet I chose to ignore it. To me, he was just throwing around bitter and empty threats. I knew he had become a twisted mess, but I never thought he was capable of doing something like this. For that, I can't be any sorrier.

I underestimated Angel's fear.

I underestimated my father's hate.

I underestimated everything.

For all of that, I am now being punished.

This is my punishment for not acting sooner.

This is my punishment for not getting here sooner.

Angel was scared, I knew that, but I still believed that my father's threat was only an empty one. When we spoke this morning, I just knew that Angel needed me with her. There was something in her voice that was silently telling me that she was afraid and that she needed me with her. My intention was to get some sleep and then drive up to Bath to spend the night with Angel. So when I woke to find her text about the yellow tulip, I panicked. I knew that I hadn't sent her any yellow tulip, but someone had. All at once, I was bombarded with dread and dismay. I just knew who that someone was. With nauseating fear, I got dressed, jumped in my car and just started driving. Behind the wheel of my car, my panicked thoughts were cruelly antagonising me. They reminded me of when Angel had said that I had been going to her place when she wasn't there. At the time, I just thought she was saying it because she felt embarrassed about all of the times that she had just shown up at my place, that it somehow lessened her embarrassment if she thought I was doing the exact same thing. But I hadn't been to her place. The one and only time that I had, was on the night that I proposed to her. As I drove as fast as I legally could, I kept persecuting myself with how sweetly convinced she was that I had been to her cottage. Alarm bells should have rung out back then, but they didn't. The more I put my foot down to get to Bath, the more worried I became. I knew then that my father was behind it all—the visits to her cottage, Angel's being on edge, the yellow tulip—it was him. So I drove in a blind panic. The more the blind panic took hold, the more I realised that Angel could be in danger. It was then that I tried to call her, but the reception was so shit, I just couldn't get through. It was right at that point, that I just knew I had to get to Angel's as quick as I possibly could. I just kept on driving, hoping that I would get there in time.

Only, I didn't.

I didn't get here in time.

I should have been here, but I wasn't.

I should have been here to save Angel, but I wasn't.

"Please give us room." An unknown voice soon pierces through my numb persecution and Faith's despairing sobs.

From out of the clutches of my growing guilt, I am dragged back into my miserable reality by the arrival of the paramedics and the police.

Many questions are asked amidst a chaotic scene of life-saving. I didn't care about my father's life or mine, I only cared about Angel's. I only cared about them saving her, not saving us.

Anything else, just didn't matter.

At my numbest point, which was when I was in the back of the police car, I just kept thinking about what would happen if Angel didn't make it. All I kept thinking was that if she didn't, neither would I.

My life meant nothing without her. For those nine years without Angel in my life, I had just existed. I didn't want to live that way ever again. During my arrest, the blackest of thoughts were shadowing my guilt-ridden mind. As Angel fought to survive, I was thinking how I wouldn't without her. I don't think I have ever been in a lonelier or darker place. The whole time I was in that lonely and dark place, I just knew that Angel was fighting. But my guilt prevented me from fighting alongside her. My guilt had made me selfish. Every time I remembered her bruised, bloody and swollen face, the guiltier I became. It hurt to remember her. It hurt to know that she was fighting, when I wasn't. In my selfish place, I also knew that I didn't deserve her. I didn't deserve her in my life because I didn't protect her. I protect people in my country every single day from those who are cruel and deluded, but today, I didn't protect Angel. So I deserved my guilt. I deserved to be arrested. I deserved the hurt and I deserved the emptiness...because I let her down.