Page 114 of Destined for the Devil
My heart clenched at his joy. I couldn’t not draw the comparison—my dad would have been just as happy that I was engaged, just as proud.
"Um, thank you John!” I shifted on my feet, anxiety suddenly rushing through me. “He’s—he’s not here right now. He’s in finance," I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind to try and justify the size of the ring.
The sky darkened during our five-minute conversation, the drizzle turning more insistent.
"Come on,” John said, already walking to the driver’s side of his illegally parked car. “I'll drive you where you need to go. It's starting to rain."
The door lock clicked open, and I hesitated for a second. But then a huge drop of freezing rain hit the bridge of my nose, and I thought…a drive couldn’t hurt.
I got in his car.
51
An Accident
Roman
Somethingwasfuckingwrong.I felt it; Iknewit in my heart, refusing to acknowledge the wretched feeling. Isla had never been quiet for this long. I called—no answer, no call back. My text had been unanswered for over two hours.
I dialed my guys in New York, and they reported back with a way more unsettling message than I had anticipated—she was driven home by a friend.
What fucking friend?!
They said they followed the car and saw her walk inside her building, just like they witnessed every night.
Ten minutes later, they were knocking on her front door…but there was no answer.
Just silence.
"Break the door down," I ordered, my nerves on the edge of a cliff. They didn’t hesitate, and I listened to the commotion—the door crashing down, their footsteps inside. And then silence again.
“There’s now one inside, boss. The place is empty.”
The words made my heart stop. Isla wasn’t home.
This was a colossal disaster. My men didn't get the details on the car—didn’t think to follow it. Nothing seemed unusual, they said—it washerwalking up the steps into her building. So where the fuck was she, then? She couldn’t have vanished into thin air.
There was no trail, no details, no Isla.
In a complete blind rage, I called Kirill and explained the situation. He listened without interrupting, giving me a smidgeon of hope with his quiet promise. “I’ll call you back in a few hours.”
He did. The woman who walked into Isla's building wasn’t Isla. She was wearing Isla’s jacket and holding Isla’s purse, but the cameras inside the lobby caught small details of the woman’s face—notIsla.
The footage of the front of the building was too choppy, and the license plate of the car that dropped off this mysterious woman wearing Isla’s coat couldn’t be deciphered in the rain.
My blood turned to ice. This was now a fuckingemergency.“I’m on my way. Get Sergei.” Kirill woke me with his calm voice, helping me focus on reality.
A few agonizing hours later, Sergei sat in my office, slouching in the chair across from my desk, annoyed as hell that I called such a late meeting.
"Where's Denis? Why am I the only one here?!" he barked while typing furiously on his phone. I watched him, pulling myself back from ripping his tongue out of his throat.
I was going to fucking kill him right after he told me what he did with my Isla. My fingers curled into fists, but I focused on another activity, doing my best to hold it together before Kirill arrived. I walked over to the bar and poured him some vodka. “Drink?”
He refused, still deep in his phone, so I crashed the bottle over his head, rendering him unconscious and littering the whole place in glass.
An hour later, he came to, tied up to a chair. Kirill sat calmly on the couch in front of him while I paced like a caged animal, shaking with rage, with grief, withnoinformation.
"Oh my God,” Sergei groaned, blinking awake. “What the fuck? What the fuck is this?" He had theballsto speak—to ask the fucking question,like he was offended.
