Valentino had Angel-Dust on a tight leash until a week ago. He's been supplying Angel with all of his voices, all his addictions, so that he wouldn't leave the studio, and slip away from Valentino's control.

In fact, Angel-Dust had been paying rent for his place at the studio, and the payments were steady, for once. And then Valentino went into Angels apartment, in the studio, just to find out that he wasn't there.

Valentino had one of his most popular workers — more importantly, the one who gave him the heftiest cashflow — leave the studio and his control, without warning. He knew how to manipulate Angel, and he had a strong feeling if arrogance in that Angel would come back to work.

It's not like Angel could get his fix from anyone other than Valentino, and Valentino had experience with these things — withdrawal systems would probably be too much for Angel-Dust to handle, he'd come crawling back to Valentino sooner or later, probably two weeks at the very most.

Valentino was sat in floor of the Vee tower, laying down on his pink velvet couch, leaning back as he went to his phone, and scrolled through his contacts until he found Angel's phone number. He obsessively called the phone well over forty times, but when he received no response, he stopped.

Instead, Valentino left Angel a few voice messages. It was chronic lovebombing, Valentino knew exactly what he was doing.

The voice messages ranged from a sweet, lightly flirtatious tone telling Angel to "come home" and that he'd be better. That he missed him. All full of fake nothingness, ofcourse. The other voice messages, though, were threats. They were the most disgusting things that a person could say to any other person, it was verbal abuse.

But the last voice message was the most condescending, the one that was meant to hit hardest.

Valentino took a long exhale of pink smoke from his cigar, letting it linger in the air before pressing on his phone to record another voice message to send to Angel Dust.

"You really think you can change?" Valentino said into the speaker, his tone mocking and dripping with condescension. "Addict trash like you doesn't change. I'll see you soon, baby."

He sent the voice message to Angel without a second thought. He was stubborn in the belief that he was right, and sadly, he was.

After a week and two days of radio silence, Angel ended up showing to work. He still needed his job. He still needed his fix. He couldn't handle it on his own anymore, he had to come crawling back to Valentino, no matter how bad it would be.

Valentino saw Angel-Dust, and he smirked. He followed him through set and into his dressing room, which he promptly locked behind him as he stepped inside. Valentino smiled.

"Oh, Angel, baby. I knew you'd come back. You know that you need me, that in the only one who really cares about you." Valentino spoke, manipulatively. "How long did you last clean this time, baby cakes? Nine days. Nine." he scoffed.