Broken Princess: Ruthless Rulers Book 3

by Hart, Stella

  Logan turned the car radio up as my mother’s voice began to pipe out of the speakers.

  “I have faced many personal challenges during my time in the White House, including the loss of my husband and the near-loss of my daughter last year. On top of that, I have endured months of near-constant public condemnation from those who once believed I was responsible for President Rutherford’s death,” she said. “However, throughout all of this hardship, I always served to the very best of my ability, and I believe I succeeded in many ways. I will continue to serve the people as well as I can, but once this term is over, I’d like to take a step back from politics in order to spend more time with my family.” She paused for a moment to let that sink in. “Right now, our country is in desperate need of healing, so despite the dark cloud of negativity which has loomed over my presidency, I hope you will choose to remember the good I have done for the American people and let that inspire you to do some good yourself. I also hope I have inspired at least one girl or woman to get involved in politics and take some of the power they deserve from those who have held it out of their reach in the past.” There was another brief pause as Mom cleared her throat. “To have served in this office is an incredible honor, and it has led me to feel a personal sense of kinship with each and every American. To those who have stood with me during the difficult times, I will be eternally grateful for your support, and to those who have not supported me, let me say that I hold no ill will toward you, because I understand you were only concerned with the good of our country. May God’s grace be with everyone in the days ahead. Thank you.”

  The radio presenter started talking again. ‘That was President Rhoades discussing her decision to step away from politics after the next election. As we all know, her presidency was plagued with scandal in its first year. However, she still managed to push through much-needed reform in our educational and medical systems, and in the time she has left, she will be focusing on prison reform. I believe we should remember this when we think of her time in the White House, instead of paying attention to the vicious rumors and scandals created by those conspirators who sought to destroy our democratic system. Thank you, President Rhoades, and from all of us here at Politico Radio, we wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.’

  Logan turned to me as we waited at a traffic light. “Are you looking forward to spending more time with her?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah. I think it’s the right thing for all of us.”

  “I agree.” He reached over and squeezed my arm, smiling faintly. “I think she’s changed a lot.”

  Not so long ago, Logan was filled with rage toward my mother and hell-bent on getting revenge on her for her part in the cover-up of Chloe’s hit-and-run incident. However, he’d calmed down a lot since everything came to a head with his own mother, and since her death, he had decided that there’d been enough vengeance and punishment inflicted upon those who had wronged him and his sister.

  Now he was doing his best to understand that my mother deeply regretted the choice she made all those years ago, and that she only did it in an attempt to protect me. He would never be her biggest fan, but he was trying. Considering the circumstances—and the fact that he could’ve sent her to prison for what she did—that was good enough for me.

  I nodded again. “She has.”

  “Will you ever tell her about your dad?”

  I hesitated for a second before shaking my head. “I don’t think so.”

  Even though the Hale family’s secret plot was blown out of the water last year, which meant a lot of dark truths were abruptly revealed to the world, I never told my mother—or anyone else who didn’t already know—about the contract my father signed when I was a baby; a contract engineered by Elizabeth Hale herself as part of her deplorable scheme.

  I figured Mom had suffered enough with Dad’s death and all of the other difficulties she’d encountered during her presidency after being falsely accused of Rutherford’s murder. I didn’t want to add to that misery by telling her that her husband once sold their daughter to the Thorne family, and that was how Logan and I ended up together.

  Besides, my father wasn’t evil. Despite the awful things he did to me, he had a good side too. I wanted to let Mom and Jared remember that good side instead of pouring more darkness and negativity into the world by telling them the whole truth.

  “Probably the right choice,” Logan said. As he spoke, he steered the car into a small side street. He stopped on the edge and turned to me with a devious grin lighting his handsome features.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked, brows furrowing as I peered at the brownstone rowhouses lining the street. “I thought you said you were taking me to a café.”

  “Sorry. That was a lie.” His grin widened as he reached over and pulled a long black strip of fabric out of the glove compartment. “Put this on.”

  I gaped at him. “Is it a blindfold?”

  “Yup. I don’t want you to know where we’re really going. Not until we get there.”

  A small smile curved up my lips as I wrapped the fabric around my eyes and tied it in a knot at the back of my head. “Good enough?”

  “Yes.”

  He turned the engine on and pulled the car back out to the street. About fifteen minutes passed before it stopped again.

  “Are we there?” I asked.

  “Yes, but don’t take the blindfold off yet. I’ll help you out.”

  I waited for him to come around to my side of the car. One strong arm hooked under me, carefully pulling me out, and then I was on my feet, awkwardly stepping up what sounded like a cobblestone path with my arms flailing in front of me.

  “Don’t worry,” Logan said. “I’ve got you.”

  “I know. This just feels weird.”

  “Why? I’ve blindfolded you enough times in the bedroom,” he murmured against my ear.

  I giggled. “That’s different. Where are we?”

  “Patience, princess. You’ll see in a minute.”

  “The guys must think we’re crazy,” I said, referring to our escorts in dark sunglasses.

  Seeing as my mother was still the president until the next election, my brother and I had to have Secret Service agents with us wherever we went. Just like the old days.

  The Service had been purged of any Hale-affiliated agents—like Mal and Adam, who were rotting away in prison right now—so I knew I was always in safe hands. I couldn’t see or hear today’s assigned agents, but I knew they were somewhere behind us, watching carefully while maintaining a respectful distance.

  Logan chuckled. “Who knows what they’re thinking? Their faces are always blank,” he said. I felt his hand on my hair, and then the blindfold came off.

  I found myself staring up at a beautiful red brick mansion with an impressive white portico and dark green ivy creeping up the walls. I knew I’d never seen the place before, but something about it was weirdly familiar anyway.

  My brows knitted as I glanced around at the nearby magnolia trees and the marble fountain rising out of a round pond covered with lily pads.

  “This is Thorne House,” I said, looking back at Logan with wide eyes.

  He shook his head. “It’s the same property, but not the same house,” he replied. “After Teddy set the place on fire, there was too much structural damage for it to be fixed up. The whole thing had to be demolished.”

  “So you rebuilt it?”

  He squeezed my hand. “Yes.”

  “It looks completely different.”

  “I know. The old place had too many bad memories. I didn’t want it to look the same, so I came up with a new design.”

  “You and the builders did well. It’s gorgeous,” I said. “Are you going to keep Thorne House as the name, or will you give it a new one?”

  “Why don’t we just call it ‘our place’?” he said, pulling me around to face him.

  My eyes widened. “You mean….”

  He nodded. “I built it for you, Willow
.”

  “But it’s—”

  He held up a palm to cut me off. “Before you say anything else, I understand if you don’t want to be anywhere near this place after everything I did to you here,” he said gruffly. “I just figured that you deserve the best, and this land is the best of the best in this city. I know you always loved the gardens here, too. But if you want to look somewhere else, we can—”

  It was my turn to cut him off. I smiled and held an index finger to his lips. “I was just going to say that it’s ridiculously big for the two of us. That’s all.”

  While there used to be four of us living together—me, Logan, Chloe, and Chuck—that number had dwindled over the last year. Chuck was in prison with the rest of the old Order high council for their unwitting part in Elizabeth’s evil schemes, and he wouldn’t be released for several years despite his full cooperation with the case investigators.

  As for Chloe, a real-life miracle had occurred.

  Without her mother paying a doctor to inject her with drugs that would prevent her from regaining major brain functions, her condition had started to improve. Her new doctors told us not to get our hopes up too high, given the length of time she’d been in a mostly-vegetative state, but after three months, she’d regained the ability to speak and move whenever she wanted. It was incredible.

  We were told it was because of something called neurogenesis—a process in which new nervous system cells were produced from stem cells. While most of this occurred in the embryonic stages, it could also happen in certain regions of the brain throughout a person’s lifetime.

  In Chloe’s case, parts of her brain had tried to repair themselves after she experienced the traumatic head injury six years ago, but they’d been prevented from doing so properly due to the drugs given to her. Once she was free of that, those parts of her brain were finally able to produce new neurons, and this in turn allowed her to regain major functions that were previously thought to be lost forever.

  While she would never be the exact same girl she was before the accident (a lot of her memories were gone, and she would always have a limp in her right leg due to certain parts of her brain being permanently damaged) she was doing very well. She’d even decided to move out to a new apartment a month ago so she could experience life on her own.

  Well, not entirely on her own.

  Rowan had offered to help her when she was learning to walk again, and while neither of them had said anything to us yet, we knew something was happening between them. The fact that Rowan had recently moved into one of the spare rooms at Chloe’s apartment in order to ‘help her out if she ever needed it’ certainly didn’t do anything to allay our suspicions about their budding romance.

  After everything Rowan had done for us, we trusted him with our lives, and so we trusted him with Chloe’s heart.

  I hoped they would be very happy together.

  Logan slipped his arms around my waist. “I’m sure you’ll get used to the size,” he said, locking his hands behind my back. “Besides, it’s closer to everything. I know you’re getting sick of driving all the way into the city every day.”

  I nodded slowly. As the co-leaders of the new Order, Logan and I had to spend a lot of time in the inner city. That also meant a lot of time in the car, driving back and forth between Wonderland and the Order Hall.

  “So what do you think?” Logan asked.

  I smiled again. “I think you should take me inside and show me the rest.”

  He grinned back at me and took my arm.

  We spent the next ten minutes poking around the ground floor of the new mansion. It featured large open spaces with recessed ceilings, herringbone oak flooring, and bronze and alabaster chandeliers.

  “It’s perfect,” I said, marveling at the understated elegance of the place.

  “I’m glad you think so.” Logan held out a hand. “Want to look upstairs?”

  “Sure.”

  The master bedroom was even better than I expected. Spacious, light, and warm, with the biggest bed I’d ever seen.

  “Come and look at this,” Logan said, heading over to a cream-colored door on one side of the room.

  “Is that the bathroom?”

  He shook his head. “That’s on the other side, near the walk-in,” he said, jerking a thumb toward a different door.

  “Where does that door go, then?” I asked, forehead wrinkling.

  He lifted a brow. “If you come over here, I’ll show you.”

  I did as he said, and he gently smacked my ass with one hand as he opened the mysterious door with the other, making me giggle.

  As I took in the new room, my laughter dried up, replaced with wide-eyed confusion.

  A white crib sat in the center with a colorful mobile hanging overhead. To the right of that was a rocking chair and a baby swing, and on the left there was a dresser, a shelf packed with stuffed animals, and a changing table. The walls had an adorable sheep and cloud design stenciled around the top.

  “This is a nursery,” I said, turning back to Logan. “But I’m not pregnant.”

  “I know. But I wanted to show you that I don’t just want to live with you. I want everything,” he said. With that, he dropped to one knee and pulled out a little red box. “Marry me, Willow. Be my wife. Have my babies.”

  One hand flew to my mouth as I stared down at the glinting ring in the box. “Oh my god,” I said breathlessly.

  “We don’t actually have to start with the babies anytime soon,” Logan went on. “Right now, I just want to marry you.”

  “I…” I faltered, too shocked to form a coherent response.

  Logan grinned and raised an eyebrow. “You’re really surprised about this?” he asked.

  “Well, honestly… I thought we were already engaged,” I replied, cheeks flushing hot.

  His forehead wrinkled. “Because of the contract?”

  “Yes.” My face grew even hotter. “But now that I’ve said it out loud, I realize how stupid it sounds.”

  Logan’s smile returned. “I don’t think it’s stupid at all, because if you thought we were already engaged, then that means the answer is yes. Right?”

  I laughed and nodded wildly. “Yes! Of course!”

  He stood up, slipped the ring onto my finger, and wrapped me tightly in his arms. “You brought me to life, you know,” he murmured against my ear. “Before you, I was a zombie and I didn’t even know it.”

  “A damn handsome zombie, though,” I replied, smiling from ear to ear.

  He smacked me on the ass again. “I’m trying to be romantic,” he growled. “Don’t ruin it.”

  I pulled back and raised my brows. “What happens if I do?”

  “I’ll have to punish you.”

  I feigned surprise and distress. “Oh, no. Anything but that.”

  “That’s it. Now you’ve done it.” Logan grinned, picked me up and threw me over his shoulder. I squealed and giggled as he carried me back through to the master bedroom, where we would soon sleep as a married couple.

  The thought of finally calling Logan my husband filled me with warm, delirious joy. We might’ve started out with a fake engagement, forced on both of us against our will, but there was nothing fake about the love we’d found since then.

  Every touch, every kiss, every promise… it was all real.

  Epilogue

  Logan

  Five years later

  “Wake up, Logan.”

  I grunted and rolled onto my back, keeping my eyes firmly shut. Willow’s melodic voice sounded in my ear again just a few seconds later.

  “Come on. Time to get up.”

  One warm hand moved beneath the sheets, stroking up and down my right leg. A slow smile spread across my face, and I opened one eye. “Keep going,” I commanded Willow as she stared down at me.

  She gave me an impish smile that warmed my heart. Stopped it and restarted it, too, like every other smile she gave me.

  “I was just trying to wake you up,” she said, yanki
ng her hand away. “I let you sleep in because you seemed tired, but you need to get up now, because you’re due to walk Chloe down the aisle in two hours.” She stood and glanced at the thin gold watch on her left wrist. “Actually, it’s down to one hour and fifty-four minutes now.”

  “That’s plenty of time. Get back over here,” I growled, grabbing her wrist and pulling her back down to the bed.

  “Logan!” she protested, playfully slapping my chest. “I’m already dressed.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I said, reaching both hands up to her glorious tits.

  The sound of fabric tearing made her gasp, and she looked down to see the front of her gown falling away. “Oh my god…”

  “You’ve got plenty of other dresses. You can put one of them on after we’re done here.”

  She giggled, and my cock grew impossibly hard from the sound. Hearing her laugh was one of the only things in this world that truly made me feel like a man. Her happiness was everything to me.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t do this on our wedding day,” she murmured, arching a brow as she leaned over my face, lips only inches from mine. “If you destroyed that dress, I would’ve killed you.”

  “I came pretty damn close to ripping it off you after I saw you walking down the aisle,” I replied, reaching one hand down to slap her ass.

  We got married eight months after I proposed, in a garden on Fire Island. It was the first time the island was made accessible to non-Order people since the society was created over a hundred years ago, and while we got a little bit of pushback over that from a few of the oldest members, we decided it had to happen in the end. It was simply the perfect location for our wedding. Beautiful, private, and enough space in the mansion for every single guest.

  Willow wore a stunning one-of-a-kind gown created by an old schoolfriend who’d gone into fashion design. I wore a tux and a massive grin which never faded away. And why would it? I was married to the most beautiful woman in the world.