Page 72 of Destined for the Devil
"Ihateyou." She suddenly became calm and collected, my mind not catching up with her message. "I hate you with all my heart. Burn in hell...where you belong. Don'tevercontact me, Roman. Understand this. I don't want to see you again. I amdeadto you."
My heart stopped.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t hear. I stopped living. Her words were pure poison, injected right into the vein. I stayed frozen on my knees, staring at her as she stood, brushed her dress smooth, and turned away.
She didn’t look back. She walked into the crowd and out of my life. Forever.
She made her choice.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t stop her. My heart shattered right there at the airport, rendering me physically paralyzed. My men followed her at a distance, but she never paused her strides away from me.
I had lost her. In all senses of that word.
How long did I stay on my knees? How did I make it back to the car? I had no memory of anything. I was lost, aimlessly wandering through time that stretched into oblivion without her.
I had come to New York certain that Isla would be flying back to L.A. in my lap. But everything was wrecked. Ruined. Broken into a million pieces.
The next twenty-four hours were a blur. I didn't sleep, I didn't eat, I just sat in my hotel room, staring blankly at the wall, completely disconnected from reality. My phone stayed in my hand, and I lived in delusion that she would text or call me any minute. But there was onlysilence.
Sometime in the middle of the night I blacked out on the bed; having ingested so much alcohol, I was sure I wasn't going to wake up the next day.
But sunlight streaked in through the closed blinds and pierced me right in the eyes. I didn’t move. Didn’t get out of bed. I reached for the half-empty bottle beside me and took another swig of the white liquid.
I wanted toerase everything.My thoughts, my feelings, the pain. My whole existence. But a few thoughts forced their way into my mind
How could she do this? How could all of this have happened? What were the chances that, out of all the women in the world, I’d fall in love with the one whose life I destroyed?
She changed my life.
I tried to make sense of it all, to find meaning and symbolism in how our meeting came about. It couldn’t have been accidental. I met her because I killed. She moved to my city because I killed. If I wasn't the monster I was, I never would have found her.
She wasdestinedfor me.
My vision floated, and my mind blabbered something on, never letting me fully disconnect. My head lay on something wet, and I realized I’d been crying nonstop.
And as that truth sank in, another, much darker one followed—this grief felt worse than Natasha's death. That thought broke me in ways I didn’t know were possible. I loved Isla more than I loved my own sister.
I’d known her for such a short time, but the heart has no clock. It only knows who…and my heart had chosen her above everyone else.
Her voice had taken over my mind. I kept hearing her, telling me she loved me, whispering that she was mine.
I love you. I’m yours.
The words looped endlessly, fraying every other sensation. I lifted ahand to push my hair out of my eyes, and that’s when I saw it.Isla.Her sweet name, freshly inked on my finger. I got it yesterday, the day that would forever be left in my memory as the worst day to ever exist.
The phone rang, bursting through the silence, and my whole body jolted, expecting it to be her, but no, it was Sergei. The cockroach I still had to get rid of and who was proving to be way more manipulative and self-serving than I had ever recognized.
It was her; it was my Angel who pointed me in the right direction. She was the one who connected the fuckingdotsand helped me see that Sergei had been betraying me for years. Without her…without her, I was nothing.
How would I ever protect her now?
There was only one man who I could turn to for help, and it was great luck that he was now in New York.
I sent Sergei to voicemail and, instead, dialed another number. I needed help,desperately, and I was not above asking for it.
"Slushayu."He picked up after the first ring.
He and I had a good relationship, and we trusted each other. We had nothing to divide, nothing to fight over. He had his sphere, and I had mine, and I was always honest about who he was—he was The Tsar, no matter my influence.
