ARIA
Being locked in a room felt a lot like being buried alive, except worse because I was still breathing.
The guards outside my door changed shifts every four hours. I'd been counting. Listening to their footsteps. Their low conversations about sports and women and mundane things while I was trapped inside slowly losing my mind.
Physically, I felt like garbage. My stomach had been churning since yesterday. Nausea that came in waves, usually in the morning but sometimes randomly throughout the day. I'd thrown up twice already. Couldn't keep food down even when I tried.
Stress, probably. Or maybe my body's way of rejecting this entire nightmare situation.
Mentally? Even worse. My thoughts kept circling back to Kai. The blood spreading across his shirt. The way he'd looked at me as they dragged him away. The promise in his eyes that this wasn't over.
Was he okay? Had he gotten medical attention? Was he bleeding out somewhere while I sat here helpless?
The not knowing was torture. Pure psychological torture.
I'd always thought dying for the person you loved was romantic.Read about it in books. Watched it in movies. Swooned over characters who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Turns out, real life was nothing like fiction.
There was nothing romantic about watching Kai step in front of that bullet. Nothing beautiful about the way he'd jerked when it hit him. Nothing poetic about the blood or the pain or the fear that I'd just watched the man I loved get killed.
It was terrifying. Horrifying. The worst moment of my entire life.
Because I loved him. Truly, deeply, catastrophically loved him in a way I hadn't understood was possible until that moment.
I'd rather live in this hell with him than exist in any heaven without him. That's how much he meant to me. That's how completely he'd become part of my soul.
And that scared me more than Salvatore. More than the wedding. More than anything else.
Because now I finally understood what love actually felt like. Not the butterflies and romance novel version. The real thing. The kind that made you willing to burn down the world. The kind that hurt so much you could barely breathe.
The kind worth dying for.
Except I didn't want to die. Didn't want Kai to die. I wanted us both to live. To survive this. To have a future that didn't involve bullets and blood and locked rooms.
I was still lost in these thoughts, staring at the ceiling from my position on the bed, when I heard the lock click.
My entire body tensed. Was it Salvatore? Coming to gloat? To hurt me? To remind me exactly how powerless I was?
The door opened. Lia slipped inside quickly, closing it behind her.
Relief flooded through me so intensely I almost burst into tears.
"Lia." I was off the bed and across the room in seconds. Threw my arms around her. "How did you get in here? The guards..."
"Bribed one of them with my mother's jewelry. He's keeping the others distracted for ten minutes. That's all we have." She hugged me back just as tightly. "Are you okay? Didhe hurt you?"
"Just my face." I touched my cheek where Salvatore had hit me. Still tender. Probably bruised. "How did you know?"
"I have my ways. Mrs. Rossi keeps me informed when she can." Lia pulled back, studied my face. "Kai is alive. Marco got him out. Got him to a doctor. The bullet went through clean. He's going to be okay."
I collapsed. Just folded in on myself. All the fear and worry I'd been holding in for the past twenty-four hours releasing at once.
Kai was alive. Alive. Not dead. Not bleeding out somewhere. Alive.
Lia caught me before I hit the floor. Guided me to sit on the bed. Held me while I sobbed with relief.
"I thought Salvatore killed him. I saw all the blood and the way he fell and I just... I couldn't..." The words wouldn't come properly. Just broken fragments between sobs.
