Reign A Romance Anthology - Nina Levine Page 0,123

mean?”

He looks at me gravely. “It’s best I show you.”

It starts to rain as we leave the city behind us. Normally, I would be demanding answers. Where are we going? Why all the secrecy? But I’m too exhausted, too broken, to demand anything.

Instead, I sit quietly and look out the window as the rain falls like elongated nails from a bleak sky.

Nearly thirty minutes later, we pull into the underground garage of a non-descript building somewhere in Newark.

I follow Cristian to the elevator, and we ride the car in silence. We’re both reeling from our loss. I long to comfort him because I adore Cristian. He is kind and loyal and good, and he is probably as brokenhearted as I am right now. But I am too dead inside to offer him anything, let alone any sense of comfort.

As we step out of the elevator, we turn left and Cristian leads me down a cold corridor. The lights are out, and somewhere in my brain I acknowledge that this floor feels unoccupied. Empty. Abandoned. But the thought has barely formed when Cristian stops outside a door.

I look at him. He gestures for me to step inside.

I don’t know what to expect.

But seeing Alessandro alive isn’t it.

26

Alessandro

Twenty-four hours earlier

I’ve been fucking shot.

I look at Bella and I know I am about to leave her, and it breaks my heart. I’m not afraid to die. But I am afraid to leave her.

No, not now, my mind cries.

But the darkness sweeps over me and I fall against her, the blood from my bullet wounds seeping onto her dress as I slide down her body and sink to the sidewalk.

I awaken to the sound of a machine beeping. It takes me awhile, but I open my eyes and all I see are the bright glow of lights. I slowly come to realize that I’m in the back of an ambulance.

Bella. I try to say her name, but there seems to be a disconnect between my brain and my mouth. Finally, it rasps out of me. “Bella?”

“Is that your girl?” the EMT asks me. He’s an older guy. His thick accent is pure New York City. There’s something comforting about him. “We couldn’t bring her with us, buddy. I need all the room back here so I can help you.”

I struggle to remember what happened. I was shot.

Fuck.

“Am I going to die?”

He smiles as he fills a syringe. “Not on my watch, you ain’t.”

But the darkness calls to me again and I’m unable to fight it. Feeling heavy, I slip back into its nothingness.

I wake up under another bright light God knows how long afterward, only vaguely aware of the people moving about me. I feel dreamy, like I’m floating. I feel good and I know it’s because my blood is thick with drugs.

Blindly, I reach out and grab onto the first person I can. “Get me my brother.”

I’m going to live.

But I’ve made up my mind that I’m also going to die.

The only thing that I want from my old life is my wife. But other than that, I want out. I don’t want to be Alessandro anymore. I want to be Bella’s Sandro.

I want to soak up the sun on a tropical beach somewhere and spend my days with sandy toes and margarita highs. I want to live in baggy beach shorts and take mid-morning naps, then feast on fresh lobster taken right out of the ocean near where we live. I want to play with my babies in the sand dunes with the tangy sea air on our lips, and the saltiness of the ocean in our hair. And when the sun goes down, I want to worship my queen with every single inch of my body until she can’t take the pleasure anymore and begs me to stop.

Facing your mortality reveals your true priorities, and in those final moments before I died, none of my priorities involved anything but Bella and our life together. Money. Power. Ruling my kingdom. They are nothing in the face of death—while my queen is everything.

I don’t want this city.

I don’t want to be king anymore.

I haven’t for some time.

Hell, I’ve fantasized about giving it all up more times than I care to remember.

I never told Bella the truth about how I felt. Never really had the chance to. The only person I ever confided in was my brother.

“The first chance I get, Cristian, I’m escaping. I don’t know how it will happen, but I will