“You will not win this,” I admit, feeling the dread magnifying.
I take Ryleigh by the hand, not caring for the brute grasp, and drag her out of the meeting room. While Marcello chuckles, hysteria consuming him, Ryleigh starts to fight me. I don’t heed until we’re in the foyer and it’s now I notice the same small boxes of explosives in the corners of the room.
“You can’t let him win!” Ryleigh argues, confronting me. “We can’t leave like this! He can’t get away with what he’s done! You can’t let him, Dante!”
“I’m not,” I say, throwing her slightly forward so her back is now facing the open front door.
I’m so aware of the clock counting down that I feel like my beating heart is the timer. Every pulsating throb allows another second to disappear. But I know what I’m about to do is the right thing to do.
I look at her, taking in the sight of the woman who changed me for the better. I allow it to imprint upon my memories, consuming my waking moment. I reach out, allowing her skin to bruise and tattoo my own, leaving its reminder.
“We’re going to run,” I tell her, my hand coming up to dance upon her cheek. “This is your real chance, cara. We will run and get in that car and leave the ruins of this place.” My lies are bitter on my lips. While she may think I’m going to run with her from this house, I’m not. “We’ll finally be free.”
I kiss her. For once, it’s almost desperately, and while my lips press heavily to hers, I don’t want to pull away. I just drink in more of her, taking as much as I can.
“Dante,” she says, her brow clenches together in a frown.
“Take the world by storm,” I whisper, not allowing her to voice the reality she’s settling into. “You were the perfect partner in crime. The perfect trigger, mia regina. You were the perfect woman to love me... to steal my heart... to blind me... to heal me.”
Slowly, but sincerely, I kiss her again. One final kiss before I make sure to drag Marcello into the deepest, hottest pit of hell. Both my hands frame her face, deepening this moment as I lose myself in everything Ryleigh. I commit her to memory while taking enough to see me through purgatory.
As I pull away, I see the tears falling from the corners of her eyes, descending her face.
“I may have had you for a few months, but to me, it felt like I had you for a lifetime,” I tell her, my voice so soft and broken. “In the same way, you gave me more in this short time than anyone ever tried to in my entire life. It’s why you’re going to leave.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head as she realizes what I’m doing. “Don’t do this. This isn’t what we’re meant to do. I can’t do this life without you anymore, Dante. It’s not the plan!” Her sanity declines rapidly as she covers my hands, keeping them pressed on her jaw. “I’ll stay! I came alive with you, I’ll die with you!” She’s rambling now, the signs of a desperate woman. “We have time to walk back in there and show him that if one goes down, then we both do.”
“No,” I whisper, unable to let her do that. “This isn’t how your life ends.”
“Neither does yours!” she shouts, fighting me. “Please, Dante! Don’t do this! Don’t let him do this to us! Don’t let me spend a day without you in it! Please!”
Even as her panic and cries increase, I remain calm regardless of the tears forming and falling down my own face. I lean in, placing my lips to hers for a kiss, the final moment of our kindred spirits, before I tear them apart.
I hesitate to leave the proximity we have, so I linger while I speak.
“If I was brought to this earth to save one life, it was yours, Ryleigh Turner.”
It’s with my words spoken that I do the most regrettable thing I could ever do – I push her over the threshold.
I’m not gentle with her either; I push her harsh enough to make her stumble, unable to react to me as I shut the door. She rights herself too late and throws herself at the door as I lock her out. I watch her for a moment, unbidden and wild at being unable to enter. Her fists pound the glass panels, her face becoming bright red with the grief I’m thrusting upon her.
But this is the only outcome for her.
Lingering, I tell myself I have to leave. The longer I stand here, the less likely I am to walk away. I close my eyes as I turn away from her and start heading toward the meeting room. I keep my stature solid; my shoulders square and I forget the tears to replace it with the man the Valens helped torment to life.
But I’m a weaker version because I won’t ever forget the screams that fall from Ryleigh’s mouth as she pounds on the glass of the door watching me abandoning her.
They’ll come with me to the grave because I now knew what I was walking away from.
I planned to love her always. I wanted to love her truly, madly, deeply. I wanted to love her through every midnight hour, during the loudest of storms, under the warm waves of the sunset. I wanted to see dreams come true just because she loved me enough to save me.
But some dreams aren’t forever.
The sight of her burned into my memory forces me to see that.
My love story was only meant for a short while, but it was well worth every beautiful tug she made on my heartstrings.
I would love Ryleigh Turner until my very last breath.
And I would do absolutely anything to prolong that agony.
“One minute and forty-six seconds to spare,” Marcello remarks. He’s now stood in the center of the room, hands in his pocket as he evidently waits for me to come back. “Poor Miss Ryleigh. She’ll have to live knowing you chose me over her.”
I hate the bitterness that shreds my heart.
“You wanted to make sure your secrets went to the grave,” I start to say, flexing my hands into balled fists. “I’m giving you exactly that.” With that comment, I swing my fist, connecting it with Marcello’s face, forcing him to stumble backward out of the room. “If this is my last moment on earth, then I’m going to go doing what I’ve dreamed of doing my entire life.”
Knowing the seconds are counting down, I make sure Marcello stands no chance of getting out alive. I punch for my family, I hit for Ryleigh’s, and I beat him to an inch of his miserable life for justice.
And I just keep hitting until the timer reaches zero.
24RYLEIGH
Heat rouses me as it scorches my skin.
This is your chance, cara.
Words ebb through into my disorientated mind, causing me to wince as they scream out into a chorus of pounding and thumping beats. The fog lifts, but not quick enough for me to guess what is going on around me.
Take the world by storm.
Opening my eyes, I’m staring up at the bright cloudless blue sky, the haze on my peripheral unable to close out the whips of flames as they lick the air, begging for oxygen. I blink, feeling nausea wash over me as I lift my head to feel the back of it, immediately running my fingers across a bump.
You were the perfect partner in crime.
Pushing myself, I roll over onto my knees, sitting on all fours for a moment just to gather my bearings. I close my eyes again, pacing my breathing before I open them and dare myself to look up.
The perfect trigger.
The sight before me is utter devastation as the Valens mansion now sits in ruins, the dust settling to reveal rubble and ash. The fire that brought me to burns brightly on the left wing of the house, but aside from that, it’s just a huge amount of stone and mortar.
Not remaining on the ground, I stand, stumbling toward the stairs I awoke at the bottom of. I fall forward as my mind starts to race uncontrollably.
You were the perfect woman to love me.
Broken words break through, Dante’s voice resonating with each blissful sentence. It causes me to fight to move. I rush up the steps, ready to walk across the desolation that now occupies this entire piece of land.
“Dante,” I manage, my voice hoarse.
I fall into a column of the old entrance hall, looking across the mess. Complete despair greets me
. Whatever Marcello wanted to do, he managed it. Nothing is left of the Valens mansion apart from the rubble, and the only life spared was mine.
“Dante!” I call out, my voice only now a little louder.
To steal my heart.
At first, I hadn’t realized I had lost my shoes, but I don’t care about my bare feet on the rubble and wreckage. I walk and climb across it all hoping to find some form of life, but there’s absolutely nothing.
The pounding in my head intensifies as my desolation starts to unravel into hysteria.
To blind me. To heal me.
I trip, falling to my knees, and I have to withhold the scream I feel.
I find Marcello within the debris. I shakily reach out to touch his throat, seeing if there’s a pulse, but his hand snaps up wrapping around my wrist. His face is bloodied, but his eyes are clear as they search mine.
“Help,” he struggles, unwilling to let me go. “Help me.”
My eyes go wide as I freeze under his gaze. The good in me wants to help, wants to start helping him, but I cannot move. For all he has done, I can’t help him. He’s a death I’ll remember, but he’d be a survivor who’d haunt me.
I shake him off only to twist to grab the large piece of rubble beside by his head. My fingers fumble with it but not with hesitation. Once my grip firms, I lift the boulder, raising it above my head. Marcello weakly shakes his head, pleading with stolen breaths to make me think otherwise about what I’m about to do. He made me lose my life, my childhood, my family, and now he made me lose the only man who would ever be able to love me.
Throwing my arms down, I close my eyes. A sickening noise rings out as the stone cracks bones. The sound incenses me; it combines dangerously with my every thought and feeling. I just raise my arms again to attack over and over again in a bloody assault.
I have to tell myself to stop, force myself to give in and realize I’ve killed the man I always wanted to. His blood will stain my hands for life and the only part of it I regret is not having my chance to save Dante before it happened.
I force myself backward, repulsed by this corpse I created. At this moment, I should be at my happiest, but without Dante here, I can’t revel in the death of this man. As I start to push back, I feel the shards starting to cut into my skin, biting and etching new markings into me as I try to steady myself to stand back up.
“Dante,” I murmur. “Dante. Dante. Dante.”
His name becomes a litany I breathe.
If I was brought to this earth to save one life, it was yours, Ryleigh Turner.
As I walk across the debris and go back on my prior steps, I’m trying in vain to retrace our steps when the house still stood grand and glorious. I fail at working out which wall stood where when not all of them still hold their shape. I move large boulders, shift through broken stones, but I come up empty.
I head back toward the staircase, but I fall to my knees. My heart shatters; the shards cut deep into my soul when I hear nothing.
"Dante!" I sob, screaming out over the crackle of the fire. "Dante!" I scream in vain, his name echoing around me.
But all I’m greeted with is silence.
You were the perfect person to save.
It’s in the silence, in knowing that I have to leave before any emergency services turn up, that I realize he’s gone. Finding Marcello becomes a dagger in the heart, knowing that I shared his final moments with him, allowing him to see a soft face.
But what did Dante get?
The thought alone is crippling and as I hunch over on myself, sobbing as the pain becomes intolerable, I realize that Dante got the perfect end to the torturous life he led.
He sacrificed himself in order to save me.
He was my trigger, my king. He became my everything. He was everything I never got a chance to tell him he was.
And now he was gone.
I felt it with every idle beat of my heart. The emptiness I had lost resumed its place, capturing me victim once more. I didn’t need a body for proof because I knew what I felt. My soul was weeping, dying within me at the mere thought that I would never again experience a single emotion that Dante would create in me.
Not even knowing how he had died for me shed any morsel of acceptance because, if it weren’t for me, he would still be alive. Even if that’s how he wanted to go, it doesn’t lessen a single shard of this grief.
Dante Valentino only lived for me, but he suffered for the Valens, and some would say he died for them too, but I know otherwise.
He died for me. He died the hero he denied ever being.
He died for me.
Hearing sirens filling the air, I know I have to leave – even without Dante. Forcing myself up from the debris and devastation, I stumble forth, my vision a blurred mess, tears running torrents down my dirtied cheeks.
The moment I step away from this property, I step away to start a new life.
We were meant to dance in the ruins. Grieving in them was never part of the plan.
Once more, the misery that rips through me is far too heavy for me to bear the weight of and I fall to my knees onto what’s left of the porch. How am I meant to start over now? I can’t go to Jackson this time. I can’t go back to Dante’s apartment or my own. I’m a wanted woman just how Dante had speculated I would be once we ran from this place, but I was meant to be a wanted woman with a wanted man by my side.
That was how our life was meant to be.
As I push myself up, the sirens closing in, I right myself readying to step down the steps, but I can’t help but freeze as bright green eyes meet my sorrowful brown. I swear, if he didn’t speak, I’d never believe it.
“Why are you crying, mia regina? Not like we died today.”
THE END
THE PERICOLO SERIES
Be prepared for what is going to occur within this series.
Femme Fatale (#1)
Femme Fatale Reloaded (#2)
Femme Fatale Loved (#3)
Femme Fatale Finale (#4)
Trigger (Spin-off/standalone)
Mobbed (1920s Prequel/standalone)
Maverick (Novella that will be part of an anthology)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ALLANA and VICTORIA
There are not enough ways to say thank you for the love and support you two offer me on a daily basis. The Pericolo Series wouldn’t be half what it is without either of you two and your important. You understand my plot bunnies, my ridiculous male leads, my strong heroines and the crazy that I live with. Plus, I couldn’t thank you enough for dealing with me on a daily basis!
Thank you for loving me for me and enduring my ups and downs, and for allowing me to be such a part in your lives.
MUM
It’s your support and encouragement that keeps me writing and stops me from letting my dream go. You’ve been by my side on this journey since the very first day and when I want to give it up, you’re the one that stops me. I’m a truly lucky girl to have you as a mother by my side.
CHARLOTTE
Without you, I would go mad! You are an absolute diamond and I am very lucky to call you my best friend. You allow me to vent, let me be me and understand how crazy it can get when a million and one voices are talking away in my head!
LIANNE
To the girl who dedicated a song to me! You offer me so much support and offer me that cold hard reality slap when I need it! You have shown me how to be more confident, how to believe in myself, and how to be more pro-active. You’re just what a girl needs when she’s being her own worst critic.
KIM B
You render me speechless! Thank you for becoming not just another author to me, but a friend. I cannot wait to see what we get up to in the future!
JENNY
One of the best editors a girl could have. You have, yet again, gone above and beyond on this book! Thank you for the time and dedication you gave to making this book perfect.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kirsty is an English writer who spends
most of her time daydreaming characters and lives she'll one day get to fictionally live. She writes suspense romances and romantic thrillers with dark twists. She prides herself on living with each of her characters while she writes them while trying not to get too attached! When she finally takes a break, she can be found spending time with her amazing family and friends, having a laugh, and usually searching a good horror film to scare herself with!
Latest releases include the Pericolo Series: Femme Fatale (Pericolo #1), Femme Fatale Reloaded (Pericolo #2). The series is set to explode with Trigger - a standalone in the series - Femme Fatale Loved (Pericolo #3), Femme Fatale Finale (Pericolo #4), and Mobbed - a standalone prequel.
Other releases include The Viper Series: Saturdays At The Viper Rooms (Viper #1), The Runaway Viper (Viper #2), The Viper's Bite (Viper #3). The Fire Series: A Fire That Burns and its sequel, Watch What Burns. Also out is Kirsty's co-write book with author Bethan Cooper, Your Little Secret.
To learn more about Kirsty, visit-
https://www.facebook.com/pages/authorkirstyannestill
On Goodreads-
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7059341.Kirsty_Anne_Still
Trigger (Pericolo #3) Page 36
