if it meant being with him for the rest of my life.
I am in love with him.
Obsessively so.
And I will go anywhere he asks me to go.
Because he was right when he said he was made to love me. Because I was made to love him too.
Besides, he is giving up everything for me. His wealth. His business. His power. His reign as king in a city that is in love with him.
“Where will we go?”
He smiles through his pain. “I own an island.”
Of course, he does.
“An island. Where?”
“Off the coast of Italy. It’s beautiful, Bella. Lush green grass. Warm, sunny days. White sandy beaches. There’s a small beach community on one side, and a rundown, beautiful vineyard on the other.” His pale lips smile weakly. “It’ll be the perfect place to raise a family. We’ll be safe. Happy. This is our chance for freedom, Bella. Will you come with me?”
I don’t need to think.
More tears stream down my cheek.
Happy tears.
“Yes,” I say.
“Yes?” When I nod, he pulls me down to him and presses his forehead to mine, cupping my face with his big hands. “Oh, Bella.”
He lets me go with a wince, his pain overwhelming him.
Cristian shakes his head. “Now that your girl has agreed to run away with you, can you please get some rest?”
Alessandro looks at me, his brow furrowed as if he can’t quite believe it. “You really meant it?”
I take his hand and nod. “Let’s do this.”
Epilogue
The sand is as soft as powdered sugar between my toes, and the late afternoon sun is warm on my back. A gentle, salty breeze whispers against my skin, and I’m reminded that a summer storm is supposed to blow in later tonight.
I hear a giggle and turn to see my four-year-old son trying to walk in my sandy footprints behind me, leaping from one to the other, and laughing when he gets the wobbles.
Sitting on my shoulders, my three-year-old daughter giggles at her brother.
I grin at my son, pride swelling in my chest. “If you keep growing up so fast, your feet will be bigger than mine in no time.”
He leaps onto a new footprint and falls onto his butt in the sand, laughing as a gentle wave rolls over him.
My wife walks beside me, her long, red hair tangling in the sea breeze. My queen. She’s dressed in a white summer dress, the floaty thin fabric wrapping around her big belly and fluttering about her legs. Our second son is due any day now, and I have to kick myself to make sure this life is not a dream.
Sometimes I wonder if I deserve this.
If this is too good to be true.
But then I realize that is the old Alessandro talking, because some habits are hard to break.
I will never regret my decision to walk away. To turn my back on the dark life and step into the light with my wife at my side.
We etch out a simple life. One that doesn’t need the sheen and sparkle of glamour and power.
One that doesn’t have us looking over our shoulder.
One that isn’t sheathed in the darkness of blood and murder.
My death was a typical over-the-top affair, as was my life, and the funeral was just as sensationalized. Even the weather participated in the drama by making it the wettest August day in years.
Black limousines lined the streets. People crowded the cemetery to watch my coffin being lowered into the ground. The media had a field day before quickly moving on to something else.
Following my death, Cristian took over running my business interests, and a few times a year he makes it to our island, arriving under the dark veil of night. He loves his niece and nephew and loves to spend days soaking up the sun and the simple but completely satisfying joy of island life. We don’t talk about the family or the past, or anything remotely to do with my old life. We only look forward.
To help maintain the façade of my death, Bella visits her father in New York several times a year, and when she returns and tells me about the city where I had once reigned, I look out the window and see our home, and I hear my bambinos giggle and my wife laugh, and I realize I don’t miss a thing about my old life.
I have all that I need.
I know I’ve been a bad man.
But I hope that if I love Bella with a pure heart every single day,