Pain.
That's all that Isabella has experienced for the past 16 years. The pain of the abuse she faces from her boyfriend and step father. The pain of her loneliness at home. The pain of 'not being good enough'.
But she's learnt to tune it out. She's...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I carefully shut the door to her room behind me and Ricardo, exhaling as I began to walk down the hallway.
"The others will be in the lounge, somethings up with her." Ricardo comments in a hard tone once we're far enough away from her door so she wouldn't hear us.
"She just got back after 16 years of living with the Russians, cut her some slack. She's probably tired and jumpy." I comment as we go down the stairs.
"Maybe. But there's no point being stupid and risking it. And you saw her with the knife, where did she learn that?" Ricardo replies, us now crossing the foyer.
"I guess, she was probably trained in London. There's no way she guessed how to do that. Also, why does she even have a knife, who the fuck gives a 16 year old a knife?" I question.
"You are literally 17 and you have a gun in your waistband, idiota." He snaps back.
(Idiot)
"Ok you clearly had that in your arsenal all ready to go." I respond and we finally reach the lounge.
Everyone else is already here, Axel included. The couches are all filled up and the only choice is for us to stand or sit on the floor. I choose to sit on the floor, and Ricardo stands, silently judging my choice as I lean back against the couch with my knees pointed up to the ceiling and my arms rest lazily on them.
"Good, now we can talk about Isabella." Vincenzo states and stands up from his chair.
"What is there to talk about? She's tired and she just moved halfway across the world to live with her brothers that she didn't even know she had. We can just talk about this tomorrow after the mall if anything hasn't changed." Elijah remarks with a yawn.
"No, when I was on the plane with her and in the car, every time I touched her she would slightly flinch or look tense but pretend she didn't." Axel says with a worried look painted on his features.
"And why the hell were you touching her?" Marco spits in his direction while glaring at him.
"To comfort her, you should have seen the way she was shaking before we took off. I figured you would prefer me to comfort her than to leave her alone with her thoughts." He responds with sarcasm and venom dripping off his voice.
Marco just grumbles in response and rolls his eyes, too stubborn to admit Axel was right.
"Yeah I don't think she likes physical contact or something. She was on the phone with that guy though, her now ex boyfriend. That's another thing to sort out." I comment, trying to relieve the tension.
"I'm gonna kill him." Marco seethes, a deadly look in his eyes as he stares at the wall in front of him.
"Do you think she knows about what we do? I mean how else does she know how to use a knife like that? Volkov must've taught her or something." Leonardo adds to the conversation, making us turn to look at him.
The anger in the room is growing, at her ex boyfriend, at the guards and at Volkov, we've always hated the Russians.
Vincenzo nods in agreement. "We can talk to her about it in the morning. We need to plan a strike at the Russians now that they've been weakened." He thinks out loud.
"I'll organise our men and send them over to the Volkov house to take some of their men. We can press them for information in the basement about the interception of our shipment." He continues and turns to walk out of the room to begin making arrangements.
"Don't you think that Isabella is close with them, she wouldn't particularly appreciate the gesture." Leonardo points out.
Vincenzo stops walking, turns around and opens his mouth, but gets cut off by a scream.
Our eyes shoot to the direction of the sound, coming through the walls from the bedrooms.
"Shit, Isabella." Vincenzo shouts before making a sprint towards the origin of the noise, us following in suit.
We all run as fast as we can towards her room, not slowing down and attacking the corners with pace.
Shit, why was she screaming? I can't lose her again, she has to be ok.
As we reach her door, her screams get louder and I can hear her thrashing around in her bed.
I watch as Vincenzo tries the handle, which doesn't open.
"It's locked." Lorenzo states, worry filling the air around us as we can still hear her screaming, now in between mumbles.
"Thank god we have such a genius in our presence." I say as Vincenzo breaks the door down.
Out of the corner of my eye I can see him glaring at me, but with the door now open, he gets distracted and we all rush in.
I get a look at her, her arms and legs are hitting and kicking the air as if trying to get away from an invisible force. She's now screaming less, mumbling more, too slurred for me to understand. I run over to her quickly and hold down her arms, while Elijah and Axel hold her legs.
"Isabella! Hey, Isabella! Wake up, it's ok. I'm here, wake up." I say with panic, hoping that she can hear me and will wake up. Leonardo comes up beside me and begins to stroke her hair, in attempt to calm her down. Thankfully, it works and she stops thrashing. Her eyes open weakly and she looks insanely tired.
But her calm state didn't last long, and I see her eyes widen and she scrambles out of our grips easily, as we loosened our hold when she woke up. She pushes up against the backboard and brings her knees up to her chest, and I can tell she's trying to cover up the fact that we just found her in a state of vulnerability.
"Um, what the hell are you doing? Why are you all in my room?" Isabella asks and her eyes dart between everyone in the room.
"You had a nightmare or something, you were thrashing and screaming so we came to help you and make sure you were ok." I explain and take a small step towards her, but she seems to cower away from me even further.
Her face is obviously confused, probably trying to figure out what happened and she's looking off into the distance.
I look at Leonardo and he shrugs, clearly as confused as I am about this whole situation.
I'm just glad she's ok.
I avert my gaze back to Isabella, and she says something so quietly, it's almost like she mouthed it.
"The pills."
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
A/N
This one was a bit of a shorter chapter.
I'm gonna be honest I completely struggled to write this chapter, it's really difficult writing in someone else's point of view for me apparently, I'm gonna work on that.
