Dark Captor (Dark Syndicate 2)

Chapter Nineteen

Tristan

The sky is still dark from the storm.

It’s still raining, just not as heavily as it was earlier.

I’ve been sitting on the veranda outside my room for the last few hours watching the rain fall, thinking about my actions today. It’s almost night now and I feel no better than I did earlier when I assumed my post in this chair.

I’m not sure if it suffices to say I’m ashamed of myself. Shame doesn’t quite describe the way I feel.

I can be just as callous as the next mobster who has to do what he needs to, to get a job done, but there are no words for the way I’ve treated Isabella. It’s even worse when I think of the fact she’s a woman I have feelings for.

I can honestly say that both Alyssa and Pa would have been ashamed of me if they’d been here today and seen the way I behaved. I think both would have frowned upon me from the moment I had the idea to get Sacha to force Isabella to talk. I knew she was going to hate me, and I didn’t care. I knew there was a chance Sacha could die from the torture and I’d have to make her watch, but I didn’t care.

The fucking beast reared its ugly head in my soul and all I cared about was getting the information I needed. No matter what.

What the hell happened to me?

At what point did I truly lose my soul and go so far over the line of reason I lost my humanity too.

Shit can happen to you to seriously fuck you over, but there comes a point when you have to take stock of your inner desire to bring those to justice for the wrongs they’ve done you. It’s that point where you either allow revenge to consume you and you lose yourself, or you become the master of your passions.

That’s the difference between being a human seeking justice, or a mindless killer who’s lost his soul.

While I feel like I’m caught between both states of being, I know I believe Isabella.

I believe she doesn’t know where her father is.

I think a part of me always did but didn’t want to take the risk.

I truly knew from the second she looked at Sacha and horror filled her face. I knew then she didn’t know where her father was. And if she did, she would have given her soul in that moment to save him from death.

What brought me out of the shadows and rekindled that spark of humanity inside me were her words, her pleas. She didn’t believe I was too far gone yet to be worse than her father.

I saw how Dominic looked. Like a shell. He looked like a fucking shell as we watched a man who didn’t deserve to be tortured being used as a pawn.

We aren’t good men. We aren’t anything close to law abiding citizens. Most call us ruthless, but we’ve never been heartless, merciless men who kill and torture mindlessly.

I might be on the verge of being such, but part of my heart hangs on to the man I used to be.

I’m not sure, however, if I can make it back to the person I was, or if I want to.

I continue to get lost in the scenery before me as I work through my thoughts. The view from here is the beautiful sea rolling into the shore, gracing the white sand beach. It’s as beautiful in the dark as it is in the bright sunlight.

It’s that view there that persuaded me to buy the island. Today it looks quite different to how it looked eight years ago. Back then it was just the house and the plot of surrounding land. In comparison to most islands it looked plain, but that was one of the things I liked about it.

To me it was tabula rasa. A blank slate. The place was perfect for me to do my own thing.

I was a different man back then. I never knew as Alyssa and I ventured across the grounds talking about our dreams I was going to lose her. I never knew I was going to lose Pa either, or Andreas.

The man I was back then was imaginative and creative. He still had hope he could have a life outside the hardship he’d endured as a child.

Today was the first time I felt like that guy.

It was just a spark of who I used to be, but I felt the old me pushing through the hardness of my heart as Isabella pleaded with me. I felt like my old self for a fraction of a second again when I realized she was telling the truth about her father.

I straighten up when I see Dominic walking along the beach. He’s smoking. I’m too far away to see what it is he’s smoking but I instantly think it’s drugs, until Candace comes into view. She rushes up to him and he takes her hand.