chapter 5
1042 Words
Chapter 5 – The Bullet Between Us
The sound of the gunshot splintered through the storm, rattling her bones, echoing inside her skull.
For a second, Isabella thought her heart had stopped.
She couldn’t hear her own scream—maybe it never left her throat. Her knees buckled, and the lamp slipped from her hands, crashing to the floor in a spray of shattered glass.
The room smelled of smoke, of gunpowder, sharp and metallic, mixing with the storm’s rain-soaked air.
And then… silence.
Her eyes darted wildly, desperate to find Ethan—was he hit? Was he gone?—but Damian’s broad frame blocked her view, his stance like a wall of steel.
“Damian!” Her voice cracked, raw with panic. “What did you do?! What did you—”
Before she could finish, Ethan’s voice cut through the chaos. Low. Rough. Alive.
“You missed.”
Her breath caught. Relief and horror tangled inside her chest, suffocating her.
Lightning slashed the sky, and for one split second she saw it—Ethan crouched, alive, his shoulder barely grazed, a line of blood trailing down his arm but his eyes locked, unyielding, on Damian.
Damian’s jaw clenched, his gun still raised, finger steady, dangerous. He hadn’t missed. He had chosen not to kill.
The realization clawed at Isabella’s mind. He’d wanted to terrify. To remind Ethan—and her—that he held the power.
“Next time,” Damian said, his voice a lethal promise, “I won’t be so generous.”
Ethan snarled, blood dripping from his sleeve, his hand pressing against the wound but his body still braced like a shield between Isabella and the billionaire. “You’ve taken everything from me once. You don’t get to do it again.”
“Everything?” Damian’s laugh was a dark, bitter thing. “You mean her?”
Isabella’s chest caved at the weight of his words. Two men—two storms—pulling at her until she thought she’d break apart.
“Stop!” she cried, her voice strangled. She pushed forward, shoving against Damian’s chest with shaking hands. “Stop this madness!”
Damian didn’t flinch. His eyes burned into Ethan like a predator unwilling to release its prey. “If he walks out of here alive, it’s only because I allow it.”
Ethan’s storm-grey eyes cut to hers. The same eyes that once held her laughter, her stolen kisses, her whispered dreams. They weren’t soft now. They were desperate.
“Isabella,” he rasped, blood staining his shirt, “you have to come with me. If you stay, he’ll destroy you.”
Damian’s head tilted, his voice ice. “And if you go with him, he’ll get you killed.”
The storm outside screamed, but it was nothing compared to the war between them.
Isabella’s breath came in shallow gasps. She didn’t know who to believe. She didn’t know who to fear more.
But deep inside, she knew one thing. Both men weren’t telling her the full truth.
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The masked intruder’s body still bled across the floor, a grim reminder that death was already in the room with them.
“Who was he?” Isabella demanded, her voice sharper than she felt. Her chest shook with every breath, but her eyes darted from Damian to Ethan. “Tell me! Who sent him?”
Neither man answered.
Damian’s jaw ticked, a muscle jumping as his eyes slid briefly to the corpse, then back to Ethan. He knew. He absolutely knew.
But so did Ethan.
Their silence was more dangerous than the storm outside.
“I’m not your pawn,” she whispered, tears stinging her eyes. “If you both think you can keep me in the dark—”
“You are mine.” Damian’s voice was thunder. Final. Absolute. His hand caught her wrist, fingers firm, heat searing through her skin. “Don’t forget that, Isabella. Not for one second.”
Her pulse hammered so hard she thought he could feel it beneath his grip. “You can’t own me,” she breathed, her voice trembling but defiant.
Ethan’s lips curved into a humorless smile despite the blood on his sleeve. “She was never yours to begin with.”
That single sentence lit Damian’s fury like fire to gasoline. His gun swung again, not toward Ethan’s chest this time but his head.
“No!” Isabella screamed, shoving herself between them, her arms spread wide, her tears streaking hot against her cheeks. “If you kill him, you kill me too!”
The room went still.
Ethan’s breath hitched. Damian’s eyes narrowed.
“What did you just say?” Damian asked, his voice dangerously low, a dark growl rolling beneath the words.
Her lips trembled. Her heart screamed at her to stay silent, but the words tumbled out anyway. “I loved him once. Do you hear me, Damian? I loved him.”
The confession cracked through the storm like lightning.
Damian’s expression froze, carved into stone. His grip on the gun trembled, just for a heartbeat, then steadied again. But his eyes—those cold, dark eyes—were a storm she could no longer read.
Ethan’s gaze softened, pain etched across his face. “Isabella…”
Her chest heaved, the weight of the truth finally spilling free, but the fear of what it meant suffocated her.
Damian lowered the gun—not away, not safe—but down, as if redirecting his rage into something deeper, darker. He stepped closer, his presence suffocating. His voice was nothing but a whisper now, but it cut sharper than the gunshot ever had.
“You just made the worst mistake of your life.”
Her knees weakened. She wanted to take it back. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to collapse. But before she could do any of it—
The lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the room, thicker than the storm, broken only by the violent crack of thunder.
And in that split second, she felt it. A hand—not Damian’s, not cold and commanding, but warm, trembling, desperate—slip into hers.
Ethan.
His whisper was the last thing she heard before chaos returned.
“Run.”
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- Writer
