Reign A Romance Anthology - Nina Levine Page 0,113

we had all those years ago.

But there is a part of me that questions if this is some kind of revenge.

Filled with a sudden need to know who I am married to, I climb off the bed and cross the room to the far wall. Behind the Gustav Klimt print on the wall is a safe. Alessandro doesn’t know I know it’s there. But I saw him remove something from it last night when he thought I was asleep.

After removing the picture from the wall, I inspect the safe.

It’s old school. Easy to crack.

I want to know more about my husband.

I’m a little rusty, but I eventually get it open.

Safes can tell you a lot about a person.

But nothing could prepare me for what I find.

I look at the folded paper in my hand.

It’s the paper heart I gave Alessandro the day before we left Italy. It’s faded and worn. The paper has softened with age, the texture smudged and flimsy from years of being touched.

He’s kept it all these years.

Something inside me unlocks.

Something I’d long thought dead and gone.

I remember when we’d both learned that my family was moving to America and how brokenhearted we’d both been.

“Mi angelo, please don’t give your heart to any other boy,” Alessandro had begged, holding me to his chest so I could feel the rapid beat of his heart.

Two days later, on our last afternoon together, I had pressed this paper heart into his hand and made my promise to him. “My heart is yours. It will only ever be yours.”

Then, in the shade of the olive grove, I’d given him what I could never give any other boy.

As he’d held me afterward, he’d made a promise to me that I had clung to through all the pain and grief of leaving behind the boy I was in love with. “On our eighteenth birthday, I will find you and we will never be apart again.”

“Do you promise?” I had cried, my tears spilling down my cheeks.

He had kissed me then. A deep, sweet kiss that had promised so much. “On my soul, I promise you.”

Yet, he never came.

I turn the paper heart over and there are our names, written in the crude but careful handwriting of a lovesick sixteen-year-old girl. Bella loves Alessandro forever.

Emotion tightens in my throat because all those feelings, all that love, finds its way back into my heart again. The truth is, it never really left. It was only held back by my wall of anger and heartache.

The final inkling of doubt falls away, and suddenly, nothing matters but finding Alessandro and telling him that I get it. I understand now. Why he wanted this crazy, unorthodox arrangement. It was because his love for me hadn’t died, and he was looking for a way back to me.

Love blooms in my chest because I can feel it so deeply.

I can forgive him, but I want to know what happened.

Why did he never show up?

I take a car to his office, my heart light as I ride the elevator to the second floor.

The doors to the elevator office open and I walk toward his receptionist’s desk.

Just as I reach it, he comes out of his office with a woman.

A very attractive, very well-put-together woman.

Amélie.

Of. Fucking. Course.

19

Alessandro

The moment I look up and see her walking toward us, I know she’s angry.

Her face is calm.

But her big eyes are stormy as fuck. They move to Amélie and then come back to me.

She’s jealous.

And it’s fucked up, because knowing she is jealous excites me.

Why?

Because it means she feels something for me other than contempt.

“Bella, what a surprise,” Amélie says, greeting her with a kiss to each cheek. But Bella remains rigid, her eyes fixed to mine. Amélie notices her mood and seems to deliberately fuel it by placing her palm on my chest, her eyes flirty as she adds, “I appreciate you squeezing me in, darling.”

Bella’s jaw tightens and her back is stiff, but she says nothing as she watches Amélie walk away.

I invite my wife into my office.

The door closes.

“Do you still fuck her?” Are her first words.

My back is to her and I turn around. “No.”

“Does she know that?”

I cock an eyebrow at her. “You’re angry.”

“Not at all. I just want to know who my husband is fucking.”

Something inside me snaps. This back and forth between us is doing my fucking head in. I cross the room and take her arms. “I’m not fucking anyone. And I won’t. I just want you,