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“There is no end for us,” he says with certainty. “It would be like trying to stop the tides. Impossible. My reason for breathing is you.”
“What do you have to smile about?” “I think I have a solution.” “Yeah, what is it?” I raise my glass to my lips and smirk. “I’m going to make Bella Isle Ciccula my wife.”
It was never about taking Bella from him. But now that I need a wife, I’m taking her too, and well, that’s just the goddamn cherry on top.
It seems Domenico De Kysa is a man who gets what he wants, when he wants it. Including me, that resentful little voice whispers. My heart stops and dies and turns black.
“Why me? If you need a wife so badly, why didn’t you pick from the legion of women clamoring for the attention of the Heartless King from the North?” I glare at him. “Why pick the girl whose heart you broke?”
It’s been ten years since I last tasted her, and after just one drink from the poisonous chalice, I’m starting to think things I shouldn’t. Like how good it felt to run my hands up her body and feel her tremble with equal amounts fear and desire.
“I know. But I thought you were coming back. Then Nico went to America to find you—”
Frowning, I try to figure out what he saw that made him so brokenhearted. Then I remember that he has kidnapped me, and I’m his prisoner, and I decide I don’t care.
Imogen grabs my hand to get a better look at my engagement ring as we wait for our coffees at a quaint bakery on Charles Street. “It’s sparklier than a vampire in Forks.”
“I will kill any man who dares to put his hands on you. Nobody touches what is mine.”
“That’s it, little hell cat. Take it from me. Take your pleasure.” He groans and its primal. “Are you going to come for me?” “Not… for you.” I crush my teeth into my lower lip. “I’m going to come… for me.”
Bella appears in the hallway across from the kitchen, looking like something out of my dreams, and I feel the gates of hell opening wider beneath my feet.
In fact, if I’m really honest, waking up with Bella was as far from awkward as possible. Instead, it felt… almost fucking normal. As if waking up still high on the numerous orgasms from the night before is something we do every day.
“Hold your horses, sex fiend. This body isn’t a theme park ride you can climb on whenever you want a good time.”
I drag the cup to my lips and almost die from pleasure as the first mouthful of coffee hits my tastebuds.
I rise on my tiptoes to press my forehead to his. “I have agreed to marry you. I will live with you. I will play the role of your wife in public as I am expected to. I will respect and honor our agreement. But if you ever put your hands on me again, Don De Kysa, then as your queen, I will destroy you.”
I want to tell her that the worst has already happened to me, so I have nothing left to fear. That losing her was the darkest feeling I’d ever known. Even now, after all the bloodshed and violent business undertakings where people have attempted to take my life, losing her was the worst.
I don’t know why I’m crying. But I suspect it’s the old me stepping aside so the new me can take the reins.
"Look at her... she's a queen.” His words brush the soft shell of my ear in a low, luring rumble. “She’s my queen.”
meet his eyes in the mirror. A renewed strength comes over me. "I'm a motherfucking queen."
“Looks like marriage suits you both, Domenico. But marriage is hard work, and you must both put in the effort to make it survive. Don’t lose what you have when you reach your first hurdle.”
“We fight more than anything.”
Stop lying
I leave the table. James tries to follow me, but I stop him. “It’s okay, I’m just heading to the ladies’ room,” I say, wondering if I’ll ever get used to being shadowed again.
SMH now you'll be kidnapped
But the moment I step out of the bathroom, something hits me in the head, and my world fades to black.
Gee how predictable
Nico storms over and puts another one in his chest. Then thinking better of it, he fires a third and says to the corpse, “No one touches my wife.”
But worst of all, I hate that I love him just as he loves me, but I can’t say it because then it will be real, and when something is real, there is too much to lose.
“That pain in your gut, that knot in your chest, that’s called longing, and longing is a byproduct of love. You’re drinking that scotch to anesthetize them, but it won’t work.”
And as he fucks me against the wall of the art gallery next to the artwork I created in his penthouse, he obliterates any doubt I have about who I am and who I’m supposed to be with.
When did you create art in the penthouse?? I thought you were just going fo lunch with friends.
There was nothing they could do, the doctor says. Despite their attempts, Nico died in surgery, and they could not save him.
Excuse me, WHAT?!?!?!???
Sliding into the back seat, I close the door and let out the breath I was holding. Beside me, my husband leans over and kisses me. “Hello, my queen.”
Excuse me?!?!?
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.
His expression tightens, his eyes serious. “Nico wants to die so he can give you the life you deserve. He wants out, Bella.”
