I fired two shots shortly after that.
10
Isabelle
Love has no barriers.
My heart drums against my ribs when Isaac asks, “Do you know what it feels like to take a life? To see the light in someone’s eyes extinguish to the point it willnevercome back.” When I shake my head, guilt darkens his alluring eyes. “I have… more than once.”
Pain stabs my stomach from the gut-wrenching pain of his words. Although he didn’t directly speak Ophelia’s name, I know she’s included in his reference. To him, she’s still dead, otherwise what excuse would he have for the way his life panned out.
Every decision he’s made in his adult life was influenced by Ophelia’s ‘supposed’ death, so even with her not being dead, her ghost still haunts him. The file sitting open on his tablet proves this without a doubt. It belongs to Roberto Petretti, the rightful heir to the Petretti dynasty if his whereabouts are ever unearthed.
Roberto has been missing the past five-plus years, presumed dead. His file’s inclusion in Isaac’s personal matters could only mean one of two things—Isaac either killed him, or he’s responsible for his disappearance.
If I were unaware Isaac isn’t close to the man his FBI file makes him out to be, the logical side of my head would veer toward Isaac being responsible for his death. But since I know this man better than I know anyone, I’m not going to jump to any conclusions until all the facts are given.
Not waiting for permission, I pull Isaac onto the bed he placed me on before straddling his lap. The heat roaring through his body is so potent it scorches my palms when I place them on each side of his cheeks. I peer into his eyes, knowing the man I love is hiding inside of him somewhere, he’s just being blacked out by a hate so strong, it’s spanned almost a decade.
“What happened? Why do you have Roberto’s details in a file on your tablet?”
Pain rises in my chest when I notice how guarded he is. His walls are up as the terror from his past haunts him. I know a way to ease his pain, to have him open and honest, but I’m also aware we need to stop using sex as a crutch. It will always be important to us, but it isn’tallwe are.
With patience comes the greatest reward. “Promise me you won’t run.”
A love so strong it almost hurts blisters through me. “I’d never run, Isaac. Nothing you could tell me would ever change my opinion of you. I love you. I’m here through thick and thin. Yours forever.”
My heart whacks out a funky tune when he removes my hands from his cheeks so he can rest them over his heart. It’s raging at a million miles an hour, although it’s only half the speed mine races when he says, “Roberto wanted to die. I merely granted his wish.”
As my heart falls into my gut, my mind spirals. I was so confident I knew the man in front of me, I never anticipated those words to come out of his mouth.
With my mind muddled with confusion, it takes me a few seconds to realize Isaac is playing a movie on his tablet. The image is blurred by the moisture welling in my eyes, but not even the blood dotted across the lens can conceal the horrifying event being undertaken.
A man with inky dark hair and a badly battered face is chained to a large, industrial-size boiler. He’s on his knees and is clasping a newspaper dated the day Roberto went missing. Since he’s barely coherent, I can’t see his face. His chin is balancing too low on his blood-soaked shirt to take in his features.
My eyes stray to Isaac when a man off-screen requests for Roberto to raise his head. I recognize the voice streaming out of the speakers of the tablet. I’ve heard it speak a range of words—some in anger, some in fear, but mostly in love. The voice belongs to Isaac. I’m certain of it.
I return my eyes to the tablet when the man beaten to the point he’s almost unrecognizable recites his name as the Isaac offscreen requested. “Roberto Colum Petretti.”
He sneers a blood-tainted grin at the end of his sentence, either in defiance or a last-ditch effort for a reprieve. Whatever his reason, it does him no good. A suit covered wrist with familiar gold cufflinks enters the frame from the bottom right-hand corner. He’s holding a fully automatic Glock. I startle when it fires two shots at the man helplessly bound and unable to defend himself. Seconds after Roberto slumps against the chains holding him hostage, the video stops.
When I hand Isaac back his tablet, he watches me for several long heartbeats, gauging my response. I truly don’t know how I feel. I’m pleased he trusts me enough to be honest, but I’m concerned as to why the game Isaac and Col were playing didn’t end when Roberto was killed. If it’s an eye for an eye, didn’t Roberto’s death make them even? Or were the rules altered when Isaac took up the task the authorities didn’t?
Isaac grips my chin to carefully raise my eyes to his. “If we weren’t on a plane, would you be running right now?”
“No,” I answer with a shake of my head. “Does that make me a terrible person? It does, doesn’t it? The man I love claimed another man’s life, yet my feelings for him didn’t waiver in the slightest.”
Oh, god. I’m a horrible person who doesn’t deserve the blessed life she has.
“No, Isabelle. It doesn’t make you terrible. It makes you honest.” When Isaac regathers the tablet into his hand, I’m about to tell him I can’t stomach any more confessions today, but his next set of words stops me. “That was the footage my security personnel uploaded to the Petrettis’ servers. This is what really happened.”
The video he plays this time around is exactly the same as the earlier one, except it goes for thirty-eight seconds longer. In that short time, Roberto’s head lifts for a second time. His bruises are real as are the bullet holes in his stomach, but he’s very much breathing—even easier when Roger places an oxygen mask over his bloody nose and cracked lips.
My eyes snap to Isaac. Shock is all over my face. “You didn’t kill him?”
“I ended his life by sentencing him to the hell the courts should have, but I didn’t kill him.”
He flicks the screen until it arrives at a photograph that stops my heart. It’s the Italian restaurant we dined at with Harlow and Cormack the night we got frisky at Isaac’s nightclub, 57. It isn’t just memories responsible for my faltering heart, it’s the staff picture at the front of the newly opened establishment.
