19:59 Tue, Jan 27
Chapter 99
Chapter 99
Isabella’s POV
Nico hit the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
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One second he was standing, alive, furious, and dangerous, and the next he was on the asphalt, his body twisted unnaturally, a dark pool spreading beneath him.
Blood.
So much blood.
I stared at it, my mind refusing to catch up with my eyes.
His chest wasn’t moving. I could see it clearly even though he was a few feet away from me.
He wasn’t breathing.
I had done that.
I had pulled the trigger.
I had killed a man.
My fingers were still wrapped around the gun. I didn’t remember deciding to keep holding it. I didn’t remember lowering it. I just stood there, frozen, my ears ringing so loudly I thought I might be going deaf.
His eyes were open.
That was the part that wouldn’t leave me.
They were staring at nothing. At the sky. At me.
I took a step back, then another, my heel scraping against the pavement. My stomach lurched violently, but nothing came up. My body couldn’t even manage that.
Dead.
A human being.
Because of me.
“This isn’t real,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure my mouth had actually moved.
Someone shouted my name.
I barely heard it.
Footsteps thundered into the parking lot. Voices. Chaos.
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Chapter 99
“I heard a gunshot,” Eduardo said sharply. “What the hell-”
He stopped.
I could tell without looking that he’d seen it. The body. The blood. The gun.
Everything I had done.
Dominic moved.
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I felt him before I saw him, his hands on my arms, firm but gentle, grounding me in a way nothing else could. We had been fighting a few minutes ago. How had that turned into this?
“Isa,” he said urgently. “Are you hurt?”
I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t.
My gaze was still locked on Nico’s body, my mind looping uselessly around the same thought.
I killed him. I killed him. I killed him.
“Isa,” Dominic said again, softer now. “Look at me.”
I didn’t.
His hands slid to my waist, and then suddenly the ground dropped away.
He picked me up.
The movement startled a sound out of me, a broken, breathless noise, but I didn’t resist. I didn’t have the strength to.
“Eduardo,” Dominic barked, his voice cutting through the fog. “Handle this. Now.”
“Yes, boss,” Eduardo replied immediately.
I heard doors opening. Voices shouting. Orders being given.
None of it felt real.
Dominic carried me to the car, holding me like I weighed nothing, like I was something fragile that might shatter if he set me down wrong.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, his voice low and steady near my ear. “You’re safe. You did exactly what you had to
do.”
I wanted to scream at him.
I wanted to tell him that nothing was okay, that nothing would ever be okay again.
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Chapter 99
But my body wouldn’t cooperate.
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The ride back to the villa blurred together, streetlights flashing past the window, Dominic’s arm locked around me, his thumb tracing slow, repetitive patterns into my skin like he was trying to remind me I still existed.
Nico’s eyes kept flashing behind my own.
Open. Empty. Lifeless.
By the time we arrived at the villa, I felt hollow.
Dominic didn’t take me to my room.
He took me to his.
I noticed only distantly, the darker walls, the heavier curtains, the faint scent of him in everything.
He set me down gently and began removing my clothes with careful, deliberate movements. Not rushed. Not frantic. Almost like he was afraid of breaking me.
“It’s okay,” he kept saying. “I’ve got you. You’re here. You’re safe.”
I wanted to disappear.
The shower was already running by the time he guided me inside. Warm water cascaded over my skin, but I barely felt it.
My hands hung limp at my sides.
Dominic washed me like he was worshipping me, slowly, and reverently. He shampooed my hair, his fingers massaging my scalp, rinsed it carefully so water wouldn’t sting my eyes.
“You’re doing great,” he murmured. “Just breathe.”
Breathe.
I tried.
The water carried the blood away, real or imagined, I couldn’t really tell, and somehow that made it worse.
Like I was erasing proof.
Like the world was pretending nothing had happened.
When he turned the water off and wrapped me in a robe, my knees nearly buckled. Dominic caught me easily, lifting me again and carrying me to the bed.
The softness of the mattress finally broke something.
The tears came fast and brutal, ripping out of my chest like I’d been holding them back with sheer will. I
20:00 Tue, Jan 27
Chapter 99
curled in on myself, shaking, gasping for air that wouldn’t come.
“I killed him,” I sobbed. “I killed him, Dominic.”
He climbed onto the bed and pulled me against his chest, holding me so tightly it almost hurt.
“You saved my life,” he said firmly. “You hear me? You saved me.”
I shook my head violently. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t—I didn’t think—”
“I know,” he said, his voice breaking just a little. “I know.”
Nico’s eyes flashed again, vivid and merciless.
“They’re never going to close,” I whispered. “I keep seeing them.”
Dominic pressed his lips to my hair. “They will fade. I promise you.”
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I clutched his shirt like it was the only solid thing left in the world, my body wracked with sobs that felt endless.
Nothing made sense.
Nothing would ever be the same.
And somewhere deep inside me, buried beneath the shock and the guilt and the terror, was the horrifying realization that there was no going back from this.
Not for me.
Not ever again.
曲
AD
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20:00 Tue, Jan 27
Joseph King is an editor and storyteller who ensures every chapter is clear, polished, and engaging for readers.

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