Page 171 of Reign
That’s the part that feels impossible. We spent one weekend on Isle Lucia. One. Not a lifetime. Not years. Not even a full week. One weekend, and still he has somehow invaded every inch of it.
He is on the terrace laughing at me for buying the place and then kissing me as if he forgave me.
In the villa bath, his back against my chest with whisky beside us, he talked about Arabella, Marie, and Lucien while I loved him so much, I almost opened my ribs to let the love out.
He’s in the kitchen, in the bed, at the window, confessing he doesn’t know how to be free, and I told him we’d learn.
We did not get to learn it. We got one weekend.
One.
I take a swallow of bourbon. It burns, but not enough.
I understand Russian Roulette now. I used to think Ruslan’s little destruction game was pathetic in the way old men become pathetic when regret outlives their usefulness.
A gun, a bullet, a terrace, a dead lover’s name. How poetic. How stupid. How indulgent. But I understand it now.
Not the desire to die, exactly—that’s too simple. It’s the desire to let fate stop asking you to make choices. The relief of putting one round in a chamber and saying,‘Fine. You decide.’
I am tired of being the hand that moves every piece. I am tired of surviving as an active verb. But there is no revolver in my hand tonight, just bourbon and the ring.
I take another drink and let the bourbon sit on my tongue before swallowing. A breeze moves over the beach and lifts the hair off my forehead, and I close my eyes.
“I don’t know what to do without you, My King,” I say.
The confession drops out quieter than everything else.
“I handed it all to Arseniy,” I say. “The family. The sectors. The whole fucking machine. He looked like he wanted to hit me again, which was almost comforting. Tatiana cried. Kai made plans to come here because he thinks I don’t notice him parenting me from three countries away. Maksim told me not to get soft. I told him too late.”
My mouth twists around something that isn’t a smile.
“You would’ve liked that. You would’ve looked at me with that smug mouth and said you always knew I was soft under theblood. Then I would’ve called you a liar and fucked the smirk off your face.”
The image comes too vividly.
His mouth.
His laugh.
His eyes in the villa light.
I bow my head until my forehead nearly touches my knee, ring trapped between my fingers.
“Fuck,” I whisper. “Fuck, Vincenzo. I miss you so much.”
“Still so eloquent.”
The world stops, and every muscle in me locks so violently the glass nearly slips from my hand. My breath cuts off. The sea continues its soft, stupid movement, but everything else goes silent around the shape of the voice behind me.
His voice.
No. Grief does this. That is the first explanation, and I hold onto it with both hands because the alternative is impossible. Grief makes men hear things. It makes rooms speak, and waves carry voices. It makes the dead cruel enough to answer when loneliness becomes too loud.
I refuse to turn around because if I do and there is nothing there, the last functional part of me will shatter completely.
I keep staring at the ring. “No.”
Behind me, the voice softens. “Nikolaj.”
