Page 153 of Reign
“I do,” Vincenzo says. “God help me, I do.”
Another impact sounds in the background, not a gunshot. He goes silent for one second too long.
“Vincenzo,” I shout.
“I’m here,” Vincenzo says, but his voice is thinner now. “Still here.”
“Tell me where you are now.”
“Service hall,” Vincenzo says. “Near the loading entrance. I think I got three. Maybe four. I don’t know.”
“You did enough. Stay down.”
“I hate taking orders from you.”
“You can punish me later.”
He laughs weakly. “That’s a terrible incentive when I’d rather kiss you.”
“You can do both.”
“I can,” Vincenzo says, almost wonderingly. Then, softer, he adds, “And I did, didn’t I?”
“Stop,” I say, because I can’t survive the tenderness right now.
“No matter what happens,” Vincenzo says, ignoring me in the way he always has when it matters most, “we’ll always have Isle Lucia.”
The car becomes silent around me.
Even the engine seems to vanish.
All I hear is him.
“We’ll go back,” I say, and I am not speaking calmly anymore. I am pleading, and I don’t care who hears it. “You hear me? We’ll go back, and you can complain about the island like the ungrateful bastard you are, and I’ll buy another one just to annoy you.”
Vincenzo makes a soft sound. “Don’t you dare.”
“I’ll name it after myself. So, you stay alive and argue with me about it later.”
“I do love arguing with you,” Vincenzo says.
“Then keep breathing.”
“I love your temper,” he says, voice even slower now. “I love the way you say my name when you’re trying not to beg. I love that you look at me like I’m the only part of the world that ever made sense and the worst mistake you’d make again. I love—”
A deafening roar cracks the line wide open, so loud I rip the phone away from my ear on instinct. The speaker distorts intostatic, screaming metal, and the sound of something collapsing, and for half a second, the entire car freezes around the sound.
Then silence.
“Vincenzo!” I shout.
Nothing.
The call goes dead, and for half a second, I cannot move. My mouth is open around his name, but no sound comes out. The world narrows to the blank screen, the sudden silence, the absence where his breathing was one moment ago.
Then something in me snaps so violently I feel it in my bones.
“No…” I say.
