Chapter 57 Pure and True Love
Pure and True Love
Roman
The end of my life began with a fight with Sergei—he was adamant I wear a specific set of shoes. “Wear these. They will give you a greater chance at escape, if need be,” he blabbered incoherent nonsense, but I was too drained to win the argument.
I’d already given him specific instructions on what he was responsible for, and that conversation took all my strength away.
Sergei was a fucking parasite, but I knew he would fulfill my last wish. I knew he would keep the promise. I knew he would get Isla out of there safe and sound, and that’s all I wanted.
Seeing Isla one last time was a dream come true. My love. I regretted nothing. If she was alive and safe, I was ready to die that evening.
But instead of killing me or submitting me, John proved to be a very strange man. He handcuffed me and sat me in front of a laptop, demanding I walk him through the money transfer.
He seemed to have it all figured out before—geolocations, kidnapping without leaving a trace of information, details on Kirill, etcetera. But when it came down to the most important part for him, he didn’t think it through.
The time difference meant that American banks couldn’t do a transfer past a certain time.
He’d have to wait until the next day. Moreover, the sum was astronomical.
Without an authorized bank representative and special codes, there was no way this could be done, just us two, sitting in some Lake Como villa, on his Dell laptop.
But I wasn't going to tell him that. He’d have to figure it out for himself.
John was prepared in every other aspect, though. Armed guards and security swarmed inside the house. This was done on purpose—he knew I could have knocked him unconscious and escaped, but my chest wasn’t bulletproof.
So, I had at least another night to breathe. Dusk began to settle outside the windows of his dilapidated mansion, and I wondered how Isla was. I breathed easy, knowing she’d been up in the air for a few hours already, on her way home, away from this man.
John ordered something in Italian, and two meatheads handcuffed my hands in the front instead of the back, bringing me into a dining room and shoving me into a chair.
Some kind of Italian-looking meal was served, and John poured me a glass of red wine.
This was ridiculous, and the smile on my face caught his attention when he took his seat beside me.
"Something amusing to you, Roman?" He piped up and grabbed his utensils.
"No. Just thinking about Isla. Have you ever been in love, Giovanni?" I asked him, and he smiled widely, as if he was excited to chat with someone. He seemed lonely.
"Not like you.” He bit down on a zucchini and looked up at me. “I can see why you love her so much. She’s a very special girl."
Just the fact that he had the audacity to assess her in any way made me want to shove my fork in his eye. That was a great idea; he gave me a fork and knife. Idiot.
"Are you married?" I changed the subject, watching him chew slowly.
He shook his head. “Not anymore."
"Who was the woman who walked into Isla's building, pretending to be her?" I wondered if that was his wife or ex-wife; the woman looked older on the security footage.
"Just some random. She was paid, and then…she disappeared.” He spoke easily, but the look in his eyes spelled it out for me.
John ate slowly, and I sat there motionless, thinking about only one person. “Did you hurt Isla?”
“No.” He sipped his wine and shook his head slowly. “I didn’t hurt her.”
“Why was she so upset on the second video?” Images of what must have happened to her and how scared she must have been weren’t leaving my mind.
John melted in a wide smile as if reminiscing, and I took a deep breath in to calm the fuck down. I’d never find out what he did to her, and somehow that made me more upset than the prospect of dying.
“She was upset about you,” he assured me. “She was upset that I wanted to trade her for you.”
“And why do you want that? Why are you doing all this bullshit? Kidnapping Isla? Scaring her? If you wanted money, you should have just asked for it.”
John placed his utensils neatly beside his plate, and I wondered if he treated Isla like this when she was here. What if he had her locked up somewhere? He definitely did; she screamed for him to not leave her in there again on the phone call.
“Because I want you dead.” John spoke matter-of-factly. “You took so much from me. It wasn’t about Isla. It was about you.”
Me. Of course.
The angel was sacrificed so the devil could feel the pain.
The rest of his meal passed in silence as we sat together during this psychotic dinner charade. I didn’t touch anything he served me, my whole body buzzing with anxiety about the treatment Isla must have lived through while here.
The clock ticked on the wall, and the outside turned into darkness, but it felt like we were waiting for something.
And then…something did happen.
A sharp sound pierced a window somewhere close by, and one of John’s armed guards slumped down on the floor somewhere behind us. Both John and I whirled around just in time to see the front door bust open and hear the noise of gunshots and multiple windows crashing all at once.
I gazed at John, who still sat in his chair, wide-eyed but...calm. Serene even. He withdrew his phone amidst the noise, scrolled and tapped on something, before dropping it on the table and walking out of the dining room into the hall.
And that’s when I saw Sergei barge into the front door with a bunch of men, my jaw dropping at the realization that the motherfucker! Didn’t! Fucking! Keep! His! Motherfucking! Promise!
Gunshots, crashing furniture and windows—the chaos erupted quickly, but John still stood there, calm and collected, like this wasn’t a big deal. I was shocked at the unfolding events, but he was so strange about it all, as if he had it all under control!
Before anyone could say a word, something absolutely unimaginable happened. Isla strode into the house; murder reflecting in her eyes.
I was hallucinating, I was sure of it. Her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, her arm was outstretched, and she pointed a gun at John as if she were a fucking sniper.
John said something I couldn’t hear, and without missing a beat, she took the shot, the bullet piercing him right in the leg!
On his knees in front of her, John no longer looked smug and confident. Blood gushed from the hole in his thigh, and he looked up at her, shaking, pleading with her. Sergei stood beside me and watched on, mesmerized like me.
"I—Isla,” John gasped. “Let's not get carried away here; we can still all walk away." John offered, but it was fake; he didn’t believe his own words.
A cold shiver crawled down my spine from the way Isla chuckled. It was a high-pitched fake laugh, like she was taunting him.
“Didn’t I propose that, Giovanni?” she asked kindly, pressing the barrel of the gun to his forehead. “And what did you tell me? That you weren’t interested.”
Unable to truly understand what I was witnessing, I watched Isla lean down and get right into John’s face, delivering her last words—loud, authoritative, dominating. “There can only be one winner, John. This is a zero-sum game."
Isla spoke my words right before pressing the trigger, deafening us all with the sound of a bullet flying through John’s skull.
Brains, blood, and bone splashed out of John’s head, and he jolted backwards, slumping down on the stone floor.
Shocked at how it all happened, I stared at Isla, still with a gun in her hand, probably not fully believing herself what she’d just done.
But a sudden and loud noise pierced the serenity. My whole body was yanked back into the air, away from Isla, who was suddenly covered in debris and flames. My head hit something blunt and hard, and then…there was nothing.
Faint voices broke through, like someone was quietly arguing.
Isla. My love, my Angel, she was somewhere close by.
I cracked an eye open to see all white. Were we both dead? Yes, maybe we were together in another world.
"You can never just fucking let things go, can you? Fuck, you're a bitch!" A man’s hushed voice pierced my ears, and I recognized it, immediate dread and repulsion stirring inside me. Sergei was pronouncing those words.
"Think whatever you want. I don’t care. You know you're the one in the wro—Roman?!" The angelic voice called my name, plunging me into joy.
I forced my eyes open wider, the effort monumental. My vision swam, but there she was. Standing beside me, radiant, real, eyes wide and full of life. Her smile was like a sunrise on the darkest night.
Sergei hovered at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, his face unreadable but tinged with something unexpected. Concern.
"Ang...angel?" The word cracked from my throat, mangled and broken. Only then did I notice—one of my eyes wouldn’t open. Why the fuck couldn’t I open it?
Isla’s hands cradled my cheeks, her touch feather-soft. She leaned in, still smiling through my blurred vision.
"You're okay…you're going to be okay." She nodded, but tears appeared in her eyes. Oh, dear Jesus, what the fuck happened? She was so worried.
"Are you…are you hurt?" I rasped, unable to bring my voice online.
She swallowed hard but shook her head. “No. But you are.” Her soft hand slid into mine, and she squeezed my fingers gently. “But you will be okay; you just need some time to recover, that's all,” she murmured quietly.
I dared to look down at my body. Something was wrapped around my stomach…or maybe my chest. Panic flared inside me, but Isla pressed a kiss to my knuckles, her tears tracing down to her lips.
She was a pure angel—ethereal. Maybe I really was in heaven, and she was my guardian angel here.
Something shuffled by the door, and I turned my one good eye to see Sergei silently leaving. Isla stood by my side, crying, but trying to smile through it. All I could do was look at her. Admire her. I’d missed her so fucking much.