Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 103124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
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 around 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 Domenico anymore. I want to be Bella’s Nico.
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 midmorning naps, then feast on fresh lobster taken right out of the ocean near where we live. I want to play with my future 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, Massimo, I’m escaping. I don’t know how it will happen, but I will recognize the opportunity when it arrives.”
Today, two 9mm bullets delivered that opportunity.
Now I know for sure… Domenico De Kysa must die.
50
Bella
Five Days Earlier
I burst through the front doors of the hospital.
Because of how critical Nico was, they wouldn’t let me travel with him in the back of the ambulance, which terrified me.
Mateo drove me, cutting through the heavy New York traffic with cutthroat expertise while I called Massimo and shouted a conversation at him that I can’t even remember.
Being closer to the hospital, he made it there before me, while I sat in the back of the Escalade with my heart in my throat and my ears still ringing from the gunshots.
“Where is he?” I cry when I see Massimo.
Adrenaline courses through me at the speed of light.
“He’s in surgery.”
“He’s alive?” I sob.
“Bella, we need to talk.” He takes me by the shoulders, I’m assuming to calm down the titanic emotional response I am having in the middle of the hospital, but I can’t stand his serious tone, so I begin to cry harder.
“Oh God, he’s going to die, isn’t he?”
Massimo’s lips stay together, igniting my fear.
Finally, he says, “There are things we need to discuss.” He glances over my shoulder at the gathering crowd outside the hospital. “But not here.”
He guides me away from the triage reception, and I blindly follow him down a long, brightly lit corridor. I feel sick. Sucked into a sudden fog and unsure of a way out.
The squeak of our shoes against the linoleum becomes a mantra in my head as I scramble to make sense of the past hour.
How is it that less than sixty minutes ago my husband was so virile and alive as he fucked me over the edge of the bed… and now he’s in surgery with two bullets in him?
My steps falter when I think of him lying in a pool of blood on the sidewalk, and I have to draw in a breath to steady myself.
Massimo leads me into a small supply room off to the left and closes the door. He starts looking around, and it suddenly occurs to me that he is looking for any surveillance equipment.
My brows knit together. “Massimo, what’s going on?”
His alert eyes scan every line and angle of the ceiling. “Nico is alive, and as far as I know, he intends to stay that way.”
“Oh, thank God.” I sag with relief. “He’s out of danger?”
“Yes.”
“And you know this for sure?”
“Yes.”
More relief.
“Then why have you dragged me in here? What’s with all the secrecy?”
“Because what I am about to tell you requires it.” He stops looking around the room and focuses on me. “Your future with Nico depends on no one hearing what I am about to say next.”