Unrequited (Books Like Fifty Shades of Grey) Read Online Free PDF Page B

media, my friends and family - forget that Alexei was never like Assad, at least not to me. As far as I knew he never put anyone to death other than murderers and rapists. I thought he was a good man. Rough and controlling, but good. Moral. Kind. Of course I was sheltered from it all. The stories emerging today paint a different picture, but while I was there I knew him as nothing but the man who loved me.
     
    It's been two years now. Two years I've been back in New York, and I still need a security detail to protect me. There are a few refugees here, those who escaped before Alexei locked down the borders and sealed his people into that nightmare, and some of them surely want me dead. I understand why. To them I must seem a monster. In their eyes I fiddled while Rome burned, enjoying my relationship and all the physical comforts of the palace while around me their families were subjugated, imprisoned... even killed.
     
    It was time, I decided, to explain myself. One day the bullet engraved with my name - my married name - will find me, and I'd like, at least, the opportunity to tell my story before it does.
     
    We'll begin at the beginning.
     
    My name is Sarah Romanov, ne é Howard, and I was born in Albany, New York in 1984. In the fall of 2002 I enrolled at NYU to study International Politics, and it was just a week after classes started that I met Alexei Romanov, the ruler of a country I'd never even heard of.
     
    Of course we all know it now, but at the time it was just another of the many small, inconsequential states somewhere over there , out near the Caspian Sea on the broken fringes of the old USSR. Not many Americans could have pointed it out on a map, but there was no reason anyone ever would. People have more pressing matters to worry about than the state of the former Soviet republics, and this was just one of many.
     
    What we did know was that it was oil rich thanks to vast reserves in their waters beneath the Caspian. We knew it was ostensibly a democracy but in reality the elections were rigged. The monarchy was still firmly in charge. Alexei, a man you wouldn't recognize if you passed him in the street, had ruled since his father passed away in 1998, and he'd been in charge since the Russians left in '91.
     
    Prince Alexei Romanov controlled everything from the oil rigs to the national media. Following his father's death he'd been 'elected' with 96% of the vote, and by all accounts he was well loved. The oil flowed, the media reported nothing but good, and everyone seemed happy.
     
    Alexei was in New York to deliver a speech about the oil and gas pipeline that was being built beneath the Caspian. It would connect his supplies to Europe, bypassing Russia and releasing the continent from the choke hold the Russians had on it. Moscow had been hogging the natural gas reserves of Central Asia for years, and the US was ecstatic when Alexei proposed a direct pipeline. We were eager to do business, and Alexei was the guest of honor at the UN headquarters less than a month after he announced the pipeline.
     
    When my bike was hit by his limo as his motorcade sped down 3rd Avenue I suspect my government would have happily brushed the incident under the rug if he'd decided not to stop. But he did stop. Alexei himself was first out of the car, beating his bodyguards by five paces. He rushed over to me, freed me from the mangled wreckage of my bike. I passed out. I don't remember him picking me up, carrying me to the limo and speeding to hospital. I don't remember his limo running red lights, even when the police escort he left behind began to chase and the sirens blared. 
     
    I remember waking up as he carried me into the emergency room. I remember the confusion as the cops were held back by his security, their weapons drawn. I remember Alexei pushing his way through the waiting crowds straight into the ward, yelling out for a doctor while my blood dried on his white shirt.
     
    I was sedated, and I slept