CHAPTER 4

There was one thing that he was thankful for and that was the fact that his father had trained him to kill and survive. He looked around him and when he saw that the fire was increasingly spreading towards him, he tumbled with the chair that he was tied to and he struggled to get his hands on a broken glass.

When he finally got it, he started using it to slice through the rope. It took time for the glass to slice through the rope but when he saw that the fire was fast spreading, he was fast about the cutting, and soon, his hands untied so he got himself loosed and got up from the ground.

He found a cloth and wrapped it over his head then he ran as fast as he could through the raging fire and before he got to the main road, the room had come down in flames. He didn't think anyone would survive in that kind of atmosphere but he did.

Now, he was looking at the girl who deserted him when he was about to die, he had saved her from getting raped, saved her from kidnappers.

Four years ago, when he was still seventeen and she was sixteen, it pained him to have known that she didn't care about his life at that moment and now he was twenty-one while she was twenty years, he didn't know how she expected him to just forget about what had happened and accept her words even if they were true.

When Enya woke up that night, she was surprised to see herself on Philip's bed. She woke up and went to the sitting room where she saw him sleeping on the sofa. She went closer to him and knelt down beside the sofa. She looked at him for a while and gently used her hands to push the small strands of his hair away from his face so that she could see him clearly.

She rarely saw him sleep but she loved watching him sleep, he was so cute whenever he slept. She gently kissed his forehead with love, she was sincerely sorry for what she did to him but she wanted him to know that she loved him very much.

Paul paced about his room thinking of how to rescue his daughter from Grand Foxx. Philip had not responded to his messages or said anything about the kidnap and he didn't know where his daughter was taken to.

"You better find my daughter or you will not like the outcome Paul" Claudia said loudly in tears, it had been two days since she last saw her daughter.

"I have tried contacting Philip! What else do you want me to do?!"

"You caused this Paul. I told you to rescue Philip that night, I told you to do something about his kidnap but you wanted him to be a sacrifice for our lives! Now you want him to help us!" Paul wanted to reply to his wife and just then, he got a call from an unknown number.

"Who is this?" Paul asked.

"You sound tensed." Grand said with a smile.

"What did you want with my daughter you....."

"Don't bother cursing me. You know what I want"

"No, I don't!"

"You used to be the most powerful man in our group but now, you have been reduced to ashes. I want the total of the money that you got from that contract.....and secondly, I want that brat of yours that you used to eliminate me."

"I can't give Philip to you. He is my son!"

"The son that you left to die....or am I wrong? Give me what I want within 24 hours or I will kill her."

" Don't you...." Before he could finish speaking, Grand cut the call.

"What did he say?" Claudia asked.

"He needs the 300million I got and..... Philip"

"He can't have Philip....you know that right? I am not going to make the same mistake I made four years ago." Claudia said.

Paul sat down and covered his face with his hands, he was confused and hurting.

Philip had been watching out for any of Grand's men around and he eventually saw one of them. That was when he knew that Grand was actually alive, it took someone like Grand to lead such men. While at the place where Sandra was kept, she was locked up in a room while five hefty men guarded outside the room. Grand was in his office talking with some men when a gunshot was heard.

The men inside the building ran outside to see what was happening but they saw nothing. Grand was not a fool, he knew that something was definitely wrong. So he sent men to see if Sandra was still in the room and when they checked, she was still there. The five men were still outside the room right their guns.

"Make sure that no one gets into that room!" Grand ordered. He didn't want to lose his only chance of becoming rich and having a re-match with Philip.

As night fell silently, out of the five men guarding the door, one of them was odd. He watched the other four men moving around with their guns and then, he excused himself.

He went to a corner and brought out the bag that he had hidden then he opened the bag revealing a rifle Barett M82A1 model, it was an anti-material sniper. He set it on the ground and laid near it so as to view the four men through the sniper lens. He pulled the trigger after he aimed well and then a bullet was fired. Two men fell dead and then he fired at the two others with precision and accuracy.

When he saw that the road was clear, he put the rifle back in the bag and took the bag into the room where Sandra was kept.

"Philip...." She said as he removed the mask he was wearing.

"Sshh," Philip said after hearing the footsteps of some men and as he expected, a whistle was blown as an alarm that something bad had happened.

When the men opened the door, they found Sandra alone in the room and she was still tied. Suddenly, a bullet hit one of them and he fell down dead. The others did not know what to do but to start shooting sporadically around the room and after they were satisfied, they stopped only to meet the silence.

Grand entered the room and took Sandra out of the room to somewhere else, he knew that Philip was the one behind the games but he wanted to show Philip that he was smarter.

Sandra was tied to a chair and he stood behind her with a gun and some other men also stood with him, armed with guns. Philip approached Grand with a short gun and Grand smiled.

"You are all grown up boy! How have you been?" Grand said.

"Let her go."

"This was not my agreement with your father, he was to give....."

"He is not giving you a dime from that contract."

"Well....well....you have grown a lot my boy but I can't give her to you unless I get what I want." Grand gestured for Philip to be shot dead but before he could finish his last words to them, Philip had shot down three men. The other men rushed at him and started firing their guns at him, fortunately for him, he had somewhere to hide as they fired.

When they had stopped firing, he loaded his gun and waited for one of them to come near before he shot the man dead and then slid on the ground and shot the remaining men dead as they were caught unawares of the technique he would use to shoot them. When the men were out of the way, he looked and did not see Sandra or Grand.

He ran outside and saw Grand pointing a gun at Sandra.

"Move an inch and she dies!" Grand said loudly.

At that thought, Philip dropped his gun and shook his head. "Don't kill her" Philip said.

"Where is my money?! Tell your father to bring that 300 million now or she will die."

"I will call him....but don't shoot her."

Philip took out his phone and dialed his father's number.

"Bring the money now"

"What are you saying? Where are you, Philip?"

"Just bring the money here dad. I will send the venue" Philip hung up immediately and texted the venue to his father.

"He's on his way."

"Fine by me." there was a moment of silence then the sound of a gun fired from above and the bullet hit Grand. Not intending to die alone, he shot Philip on his right hand and Philip screamed with pain as he struggled to keep his stance.

Before he went out, Philip had already set his sniper rifle at the base of a window and tied a rope to the trigger and the window. Because the wind up there was so high that it could move a window, he set it n such a way that when the window opens and widens, the trigger would be pulled and the target would be shot, he had already seen Grand's standing position as he set the rifle.

The window opened again because the wind was high and then Grand was shot again in the chest. This time he fell flat on his face to the ground and his blood flowed out freely.

Philip struggled to get up and he turned to the window where the rifle was and he shot the rope loose from the rifle. Sandra loosened her rope and then ran to Philip to help him. She was a young girl of eighteen and she was so traumatized to see her brother bleeding uncontrollably.

When Paul and his wife arrived with the money, they found Grand lying lifeless on the ground and Sandra was trying to help Philip up with his wounded and bleeding hand.

Paul helped Philip to the car and Claudia helped her traumatized daughter to the car also. They drove Philip to the hospital and there he lost consciousness.

"He saved her all by himself.... thought he wouldn't." Claudia said with tears. Sandra cried as she watched her brother lie helplessly on the hospital bed.

Paul sat down in his seat in silence, he didn't really care about Philip, he was happy that his daughter had survived and that Philip had not forgotten what he had taught him since he was a child. At least, Philip was a weapon that he could use to defeat his enemies.

Meanwhile, Grand was taken to the hospital by two of his men, when they asked the doctor about his condition, the doctor told them that Grand was still alive but would need a surgery and it would take weeks for him to finally wake up.

When Philip woke up, he saw Enya sitting beside the bed. She had come immediately after he heard the news about his injury from Claudia though Paul was against it, he couldn't stop Enya from coming. He only hoped that Philip had not fallen for Enya.

"You're awake." she said with all seriousness, she wasn't smiling because she had been crying since she got there. Philip laid his head back on the pillow and sighed.

"What are you doing here?"

"That doesn't matter because I am here already. Say all you want to say." Enya said. Philip glanced at Enya and knew that mood of hers, she wasn't going to leave until he could stand fully.

"I can drive down to my house by myself."

"No you can't and I won't leave you is that okay?" That was okay for him to hear but he pretended like it wasn't enough.

"Where is my mother?" He asked.

"She went to buy some food for you." She answered. There was silence between them for a while before Philip spoke up.

"Shouldn't you be with Martins? He needs you more than I do."

"The good news is that you are the one that I like so you need me more than he does."

"He also likes you."

"I know that you are concerned about me but the truth is that you need that concern more than me"

"Mmmm" he uttered.

Just then Claudia came in with some food and she smiled seeing her son awake. "I heard you two quarreling I hope you have settled now?" She said with her motherly smile.

"I just need the food" Philip said as he sat up and picked the food the eat while Claudia gave Enya her own plate of food.

"Sandra is fine, your father took her home." Claudia said.

Philip nodded and ate only two spoons from the food and he gave the remaining to Enya. "Thanks" he said and laid down on the bed again.

Claudia knew that Philip was still disturbed by what happened four years ago.

"Are you still eating?" Claudia asked.

"No, I'm not hungry. You can leave now.....both of you." He said.

Claudia got up and left while Enya sat down wondering what to say to Philip. She knew what he was thinking at that moment. She kept the food aside and got up from her seat to sit on the bed beside him.

"We are really sorry and deep down you know that....give us one more chance to show you how much we care about you." Philip turned to look at Enya with his pronounced grey eyes.

"It's much better if you know that I don't need you in my life. That would suffice won't it?" He said and turned away from her.

Those words hit her so hard that she felt like they were crushing her but she smiled faintly and returned back to her seat. She had always wanted to ask him how he survived those two years when no one knew his whereabouts after he escaped from the death of a fire but she couldn't find the courage to do it.

She knew that he suffered so much that he had changed completely by the time he returned home. She wanted to know what happened when he escaped that fire.

"Thanks for the food." she said knowing that he wouldn't answer. It didn't matter whatever he thought about her, she wasn't going to stop loving him even if she was going to die while doing so.