Banking On My Bodyguard

chapter 37

Kingsley's POV

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I ground my teeth together as the others stared at the screen behind me, replaying the ransom video once again.

Since it had been released by the press this morning, they must have watched it at least 30 times, pouring over every detail trying to figure out the location.

But I couldn't bring myself to watch it again, because that was Vesper, my Vesper, and I meanwhile was stuck here. Practically useless.

The first time I'd seen it, seen her like that, it had been awful. I'd stormed out of the room and made my way into the gym, working out my rage on the punching bag until it had finally fallen from the ceiling.

I glanced down at my bruised hands, I was lucky I hadn't broken anything after an hour of exertion. And the worst part was that it hadn't helped, I didn't feel any better.

One of the guys around the table picked up the remote, probably rewinding the video. I'd begged them to mute it hours ago, and to my relief, they'd agreed.

Vesper's pained screams had almost driven me insane. After weeks of worrying, my imagination had been kind compared to the reality that was on the screen.

Every time I thought about her beautiful damaged face or the fact that she was completely naked in the presence of her captors, I almost vomited. The perpetrators had blurred her body of course, as well as the man inflicting the torture upon her, but it didn't lessen the knowledge of her situation.

She was lost to me.

The moment I'd left her that night she had been lost. I'd replayed the day up until that moment a million times in my mind, debating if there was some possibility that I should have seen it coming. But there had been nothing, it was the perfect day. Until it wasn't.

And that was what I regretted most of all, that I'd been so blind. That I hadn't checked her room first. That I'd left her completely defenceless.

And for what? To go and shower some ridiculous fucking sand off me.

So now some part of me had decided that I deserved this pain, it was a form of torture and punishment for my own carelessness.

Over the last few weeks I'd given up on sleeping completely. When I had tried, twisted nightmares haunted me, images of Vesper being beaten and raped, or worse, flickered through my unconscious mind. Instead, I decided it was safer to invest the time in trying to find her.

After I discovered she was missing, my uncle had set up an investigation base at his house. He'd called in the best members of his company, as well as every policeman and every member of MI6 that he could find.

Mr Monroe had offered Isaac endless amounts of money, hoping that every pound more might somehow bring his daughter back. I wondered now how he was feeling, he would've seen the video and I couldn't imagine how it tormented him.

The criminals were demanding £10 million in ransom. It wasn't like Vesper's father didn't have the money, in fact he had millions more than that, but the government agents had insisted for him not to negotiate.

They argued that it would just make him a bigger target in the future, and although logically I agreed with them, the part of me that cared for Vesper desperately wanted him to pay it.