“There’s too much blood.” Luis cast me a grim look and then looked at Enzo. “He needs medical attention, now.”
“Nicco.” I clutched his hand, blood squelching between our fingers. But I didn’t care. As long as he was breathing, as long as I felt his fingers still curled around mine, he was alive. “You have to hold on, okay?” Pain ripped through me. “I need you… I need you.”
“He’s not looking so good. If I can’t have you do you really think I would ever let him have you?” The sick and twisted amusement in Scott’s voice flipped something inside me, and without thinking, I pulled away from Nicco and stood up. My hand went to the waistband of my jeans.
“Arianne,” Luis yelled, but it was too late. I was consumed with hatred, with the overpowering need to hurt Scott the way he had hurt me so many times.
“Anger looks good on you, Principessa.” He grinned as I stalked toward him, as if this was all part of his game.
Well, I was done playing.
“Ari,” Enzo warned as I creeped closer.
“Relax,” Scott chuckled. “She won’t hurt me. She doesn’t have it in—”
I barely felt the blade pierce the soft tissue of his neck. Barely registered the blood spraying out of his jugular, coating my hand and clothes like a jet spray of red paint. Barely heard his garbled pleas for help as the blood filled his mouth, trickling down his chin like juice from a ripe strawberry.
“Fuck,” Enzo holstered his gun and slowly took the bloodied knife from my hand. “Ari, look at me.”
My eyes snapped to his as if waking up from a trance. “He’s dead.” I glanced down at Scott’s lifeless body.
“He is,” Enzo said. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”
But when I glanced back at Nicco, at the pool of blood circling him, his shallow breaths and the pallor to his skin, I knew it was too late.
Scott had taken everything from me.
There was no future without Nicco. No life or happiness. There was only pain and grief and hurt.
Nicco was my heart.
The other half of my soul.
I didn’t want to live in a world without him.
As I stared at him, the only man I would ever love, and watched the life drain from his eyes, I wanted that too.
I wanted to die.
Chapter 33
Arianne
The days were long, and my heart was broken.
It had been two weeks since Nicco died in that building.
Two weeks of unimaginable anguish and pain.
I’d wanted to die that day. To follow him into the afterlife. But Enzo and Luis had grounded me, Nora too. They had stood by my side, watching as the EMTs rushed into the warehouse and began working on Nicco, trying to stem the bleeding and find a pulse.
Tears burned my throat just thinking about it. Within less than twenty-four hours I had gone from a bride so full of love and hope for the future, to a murderer with blood on my hands, mourning a loss so inconceivable I didn’t think I would survive it.
But I couldn’t regret killing Scott.
I could only regret that I didn’t do it the first time around, when I’d had the chance.
Maybe then we wouldn’t be here now.
“Arianne.” Tristan stood as I entered the room. He came over and pulled me into his arms. “How are you?”
“I feel empty inside.” My hand fluttered to my chest.
“You can’t think like that. He wouldn’t want you to.”
“I just don’t know how I’m supposed to do this without him, Tristan.” Tears poured down my cheeks.
My cousin took my face in his hands. “You have hope. The doctors said he’s stable. His body just needs time.”
Time.
I’d already survived fourteen days without him, I didn’t want to survive another.
“Thank you.” I wiped my eyes on my sleeves. “For staying with him.” Moving over to the bed, I gently brushed the hair from Nicco’s eyes. His skin was sallow, and his eyes were sunken. A tube connected him to the machine breathing for him.
He’d died that day, on the cold floor of the warehouse, but the EMT’s had brought him back. Twice, in fact. They’d managed to stop the bleeding and save his punctured lung, but Nicco hadn’t woken up. They said his body needed to repair itself.
They said he needed time.
But time didn’t feel like our friend, it felt like our enemy, closing in around us.
Sitting down, I took his hand in mine. “It’s me,” I said. “It’s