It Should Have Been Like This (The Revised Version)

Chapter 113: Checkmate (2)

The color drained from her face. Her chair scraped against the wooden floor as she jolted to her feet. "Shit." The curse barely escaped her lips before she reached for the gun hidden at her waist, but Lavender was faster.

A flick of her wrist. A barely visible glint of silver.

Pain exploded through Giovanna’s hand as something sharp embedded itself into her wrist. She screamed, the gun slipping from her grasp and clattering to the floor.

Lavender was on her in an instant. She surged forward, pulling out her own firearm and stepping down hard on Giovanna’s fallen weapon, keeping it out of reach. The weight of her shoe against the cold metal was final, unwavering.

Giovanna froze as something much colder pressed against her temple—the barrel of a gun.

Her body went rigid. Her mind raced. She had underestimated Lavender, had stayed alone in this room like a fool, thinking she had control. But it was fine. It had to be fine.

Her guards were right in the next room.

Any second now, they would burst in.

Any second now—

But seconds passed. And nothing happened.

A chill seeped into her bones.

Slowly, hesitantly, she lifted her head and met Lavender’s gaze. The coldness in those eyes—pure, unshaken, merciless—sent chills down her spine.

Her breath hitched. "How?" Her voice was barely above a whisper.

But beneath that whisper was something deeper, something more terrifying.

Doubt.

How? How had she lost so easily? How had years of planning unraveled in mere minutes? How had she, of all people, been outmaneuvered by Lavender—the woman she had once deemed weak, emotional, stupid?

Lavender smiled, tilting her head as if considering whether or not to answer.

Giovanna gritted her teeth. “Tell me how!” she screamed, rage and desperation cracking her voice. “How did you figure it out?! There was no clue, no hint! I was careful!”

Lavender let out a small, almost amused sigh. Then, with the same infuriating calmness, she said, “I have very clever children, Giovanna. Children with excellent memory.” She paused, watching as realization flickered behind Giovanna’s eyes. “And unfortunately for you, you just had to abduct one of them—the one with the second-best long-term memory.”

The words settled like a death sentence.

Giovanna’s breath stuttered. Slowly, almost mechanically, she looked down at her trembling hand.

At the ring on her finger.

The simple, elegant band that had been passed down through her family for generations. Her mother’s keepsake. Something she never took off.

Her stomach dropped.

No.

No, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t have been this. Not something so small, so insignificant.

This couldn’t be what brought her to her knees.

And yet—

Her fingers tightened into a fist.

How impossibly, pathetically simple.

The door behind Giovanna creaked open, the very door where her men should have been lying in wait. Hope flared in her chest, a fleeting ember—only to be snuffed out by the next voice she heard.