Page 75 of Isle of Beauty

“That’s not enough, but I don’t give a shit. He can ask for the skin off my back.”

He adds that last part with a deeper frown. I don’t know what the fuck is going on between them but they better figure their shit out before I blow up in both their faces.

Lana is my blood, my best friend and the best version of us all. She needs to be okay. I refuse to believe in a world where she doesn’t exist in all that stubbornness.

Igor confirmed that Misha is into selling skin and without a request for ransom, I can only imagine what Lana has been taken for. Actually, I can’t imagine. I refuse to.

I clench my fist and keep my mouth shut. I close my eyes and take a deep breath in, releasing slowly as I’ve seen on these stupid life coach instagram reels. Whoever said meditation and breathwork solve everything has never had their cousin kidnapped, obviously.

“So, you and Andrea don’t talk,” I ask to have something else to focus on but the dread in my bones.

Pierce sighs loudly. In the past month, he hasn’t given me much to work with. I just know that Lana is head over heels for him and that he loves to eat pussy, which I love for her. Other than that, he kept to himself, only opening up to Julian and Lana.

It’s okay, it’s not like my role in the organisation is so prominent that we need to be speaking with each other but I feel like I’m the only one he doesn’t talk to. How ironic would it be if it took a catastrophe like the one we’re living for us to get close.

I guess it is ironic because he’s not shutting me out, instead looking at me with an open vulnerability I only witnessed that first night in London.

“I don’t have to tell you that it’s complicated,” he drawls and I snort in response. Which family isn’t a little fucked up and complicated? Igor’s brother is in the sex slaves business for fucks’ sake.

“Andrea’s my cousin on my mother’s side. He’s the eldest son of my aunt Catalina whom my mother was really close with. Her husband Mario Capaldi was THE Mario Capaldi.”

I widen my eyes in surprise. The Capaldi family is notorious in the London underworld for giving the best protection and knowing everyone’s business. I would know because I’ve made it my mission to do exactly the same, collecting secrets like dragons hoard jewels.

“Andrea is actually my biggest competitor. We’re both in the cybersecurity industry, except on different sides of the chessboard. Ever since I established Pierce Security Company, I’ve done my best to work with governments and officials and protect them from people like Andrea snooping into confidential documents.”

“So he hates you,” I conclude.

“A little reductive but yeah, pretty much” Pierce agrees. “It doesn’t help that when we were young, I was a little shit who bullied him every chance I got. And I had a lot of chances considering how close our mothers were.”

If Andrea hates Pierce that much, he’s not helping out of his good heart and he wants something more than to make Pierce pay.

I know we’d both give anything to get Lana back. And teach the motherfuckers who took her a lesson they will remember. In Hell. She might be the enforcer of the Moretti-Bartoli families but I can kill just as well. With the look Pierce gives me, he knows it too. And then there’s Igor, the protector and friend. The love of his life is in a coma, his best friend has been taken. If we go on a rampage, I wouldn’t want to be on the other side.

What Pierce just said gives me pause though. I smile but it’s a sad one. “Wait a minute. You work with governments?”

He simply nods, regret lining his eyes.

“So Lana was right. You’re gonna sell us out.”

“I’d never do anything to threaten Lana.”

“No, but the rest of us are fair game, aren’t we?”

“Not anymore”.

I scoff at his half-assed answer. “Pierce, if I end up in prison, Lana will never forgive you. You better pray she kills you fast then. Not only because her favourite person, which is me by the way, motherfucker, is in jail but because the person who put her there is the man she thought she could trust. Be sure to know what you’re doing.”

We don’t talk for the rest of the flight.

After we land, a chauffeur picks us up in a nondescript black sedan with tinted windows. We actually can’t see shit through them, and the space between us and the driver is closed with a partition. I’m getting the jeebies thinking of staying stuck. My skin starts to perspire and my heart picks up speed. I can’t regulate my breathing. I try to close my eyes again and focus on my breaths but all I can feel is that I can’t get enough air in my lungs.

Silently, Pierce takes my hand in his. The tight squeeze he gives me brings me back to the present moment. I cast my eyes down to our locked hands and focus on how his is bigger than mine and coated with a light dusting of hair. I look up and we exchange a long look. He simply nods but doesn't let go of my hand. The small gesture is enough to get me through the rest of the long drive.

Before I know it, we stop.

When I get out of the car, my jaw drops to the floor. We’re in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, with no houses around, completely isolated by thick forest and a bumpy road. The house that faces us looks like a cottage on steroids. It’s a dream for cottage-core sluts like me. The old-fashioned building is only one story high, and welcoming despite its vastness. The thatched roof gives the stone structure a charming finish, and it’s definitely not what I expected for Andrea Capaldi, notorious cyber criminal genius.

The chauffeur guides us inside without a word and we are made to wait in a comfortable living-room that calms my battered senses. Everything in this room feels like it’s been designed for me in mind, from the creamy walls to the exposed beams, the cognac leather sofa we are sitting on to the coffee tables made of raw wood and the bookcase and dresser to match.

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