Deadly Love

Chapter 19

I was still looking at Charlie with utter shock and absolute bafflement. Emanuele helped me escape Jade. My mind kept repeating those words over and over again but refused to register the meaning behind them. I was so sure of the monster Emanuele was and was trying to come to terms with the obscure knowledge of how I could love someone who had such violent tendencies, who only knows how to hurt people and have no regards for humanity! Who doesn't even flinch when he pulls a trigger on someone and even makes me question my morality and humaneness! My love for Emanuele is irrational and illogical in every sense of the two words and has made me question my sanity a million times.

But the truth was I was coming to terms with it. I was willing to accept I was insane for loving such an inhuman human, it was better than living in denial. I was ready to accept what a vile specimen he was and look past all his atrocities because I was weak enough not to deny my heart what it wanted. I thought losing so much in my life, the grief I felt and the loneliness I was experiencing was enough to drive me crazy and make me find solace in the arms of someone like Emanuele who played a big part in making me feel the grief that I felt. I fell in love with someone who made my brother go through hell, and I felt ashamed of it. But even shame was better than denial.

I had long ago accepted the fact that Emanuele was a sadistic murderer who will never leave his victim alive and is never going to change. But now...now hearing my brother say that Emanuele was the reason he was alive today, made my whole words tilt upside down. It made me reevaluate everything I thought and considered Emanuele to be. It took me months to figure out and make up my mind about him, to accept him for who he is and still be with him without making myself look like a bad guy or an accomplice. Someone who was attracted to a killer!

But now hearing about a man who could do nothing but cause mischief, do something good in his life and spare someone made me see him in a whole new light, see him with a new perspective, forced me to change the way that I think about him and question myself whether a man like Emanuele was capable of really changing, or doing something good!

It amazed and shocked me at the same time.

I stared at Emanuele then and this time his eyes were solely on me. He saw every expression that crossed my face and all the questions that filled my eyes. He saw the change in my opinion about him, he saw the gratefulness on my face for him and saw the apology in my eyes for my words earlier. He did nothing but looked away.

"How?" my voice conveyed the confusion I felt at this new revelation. It was the only question that I deemed appropriate to ask. How was this possible? How can someone change so drastically? Wasn't he the one who always threatened me about my brother? Didn't he tell me how much he hated Charlie and I and considered us to be the scheming siblings?

How can he spare the lives that he hated?

Because Emanuele just didn't spare my brother's life but mine as well, not once but several times, even when he threatened to kill me himself. So what should I make of this situation? What was he playing at? I thought Emanuele helped me because some part of him still cared about me; he protected me because he cared! Was it the same part in him that convinced him to let my brother go?

I saw my brother as he exchanged a look with Emanuele, who was still leaning against the tree, trying not to care about the sibling's reunion. My brother looked back at me and his eyes softened when he saw the mess I was at the moment. I just needed stability because my whole world was shaken up and for that I needed answers.

"When they figured out I was the mole, they locked me up Jade." Charlie began with difficulty as if the mere remembrance of the things happened to him caused him pain. "For a few months I was in the basement of their headquarters but after that they moved me to somewhere else... I don't know what that place was but I remember that it was always dark and I was sedated most of the time because I struggled so much. I can just tell you Jade that the things that happened to me, they messed me up." Tears filled his eyes. "It was painful... excruciating not only because of the physical torture but because I so desperately wanted to get out of there and come back home to you. Or I wanted someone to end it so badly, so I could just go and meet mom and dad." A shudder passed his body and he closed his eyes. I immediately grabbed onto his hand and felt the tremors he was experiencing as he relived the memories he badly wanted to get rid of. I know, I could relate because that is exactly how I felt when I was abducted in Sicily and the only person who got me through it was Emanuele. I strongly believed and hoped at the time that he would come and save me and it will all be over soon, but for Charlie... He had no hope that someone would look for him, a sister who didn't even know where he was until it was too late and a lieutenant who had no leads. And when there is no hope, wishing for death seems like the only way.