“My boy,” he said, pulling me in for a big hug. “A handshake? Hugs are for family.” He thumped my back with his hand as he embraced me, and I did the same.
Though he was getting older, he was still just as big and strong as he’d ever been. A big lion of a man, my mother always said. And though I might be three inches taller and broader in the shoulders, he still made me feel like a little kid when he hugged me.
“Come in,” he said. “Just dotting some Is and crossing some Ts.” He pulled back from the bear hug with a conspiratorial wink. Looking past his shoulder, I saw two familiar faces, though they’d also changed a good deal since I’d seen them last. “You remember the Popescu brothers,” my father said.
Of course, I did. Total dickheads, the both of them. But now they were acting far less dickish than I remembered.
They actually made eye contact, for starters. The older one went to the trouble of standing up and shaking my hand. And then the younger one did, too.
Last I remember, these motherfuckers could hardly be trusted not to shiv a guy with his own goddamned knife. But here they were, sitting in chairs like civilized human beings, actually signing a contract—actually reading it.
Some things had most definitely changed since I left. I glanced at the paper on my father’s big, walnut desk. The words deed and quarry popped off the page at me.
Well, well, well. So the Popescues had finally agreed to sell. I wondered what my father had to do to get this to happen. Whatever it was, I knew it had been shrewd. My father knew how to walk that line between legitimacy and illegality in a way that my brother didn’t.
Petre was a monster of his own making—if not for his last name, he’d probably already be either in prison or dead. My father, on the other hand, was a decent guy in a dirty business, and he wasn’t afraid to get dirty too, if it benefited his family and legacy.
He made his way over to the two of them, carefully positioning himself between them so that they couldn’t glance at one another.
“Just sign here, and here, annnnnd…here,” he said, thumping his finger on the paper. Once the last line was signed, he beamed and clapped his huge hands together.
“Done! Who wants vodka?”
The Popescues were all over that plan, but I passed. The maid, Maria, brought me my coffee with a smile. I’d known her damned near my whole life. Yet another sign that my dad was a decent guy, at his core. His staff loved him and always had. As long as they were loyal.
Three quick rounds of vodka shots later, my father sent the Popescu brothers off with friendly slaps of their meaty backs. He said goodbye to them in Praquean and Russian, and the strange pidgin that gypsies like the Popescues’ ancestors spoke, and then closed the door behind them as they left, turning to me with an even bigger smile.
I eased myself down into one of the leather wingbacks that flanked the fireplace.
“So what did you pull off there, exactly?”
He eyed me, like he wasn’t sure if he should tell me.
“That would be family business. And I thought you wanted nothing to do with that? Or…” He raised his eyebrow. “Did you change your mind?”
Shrewd, like I said. “Out with it, Dad. What just happened?”
“Might have caught the father in a bit of a compromising position with one of his young manservants,” he said softly, with a snicker. “He begged me not to tell his wife, and I’m no monster, son, you know that, but I might have leaned on him to persuade the family that their quarry was running short on profitability, and to sell quickly to the next person who offered them a decent price. Which, of course, was me.” He leaned in conspiratorially.
I couldn’t help but laugh a bit, too. He was so overjoyed and his happiness was always contagious.
“Those poor fuckers.”
“They just sold me the cheapest copper and gold mine in the history of the world.” He eyed me with a twinkle, holding the silence a beat longer than was necessary.
“What?” I asked, feeling an undercurrent of something else going on.
“Why do you think I would figure out, while you are back here, a way to buy a mine we’ve wanted for so long? Rich in precious metals…”
“Why?” I pretended to not catch on to his play.
“You’re not that dumb, Vasile. You know why. You probably even suspect I set up the father with the young boy servant. Now, I have a new mine, and need the expertise of someone that has thrived in that business.”
I left it hanging there, knowing full well what he meant. He set it all up. I’d returned home upon my parents request to attend Petre’s wedding. Now, all of the sudden, my father takes on a precious metals business.
He smiled, letting it go for the moment, knowing I knew what he was up to.
“Now, though. To other business. What brings you here today? How can I help?”
The true scope of what Valeria and I had done together—to each other, with each other—began to take shape for the first time. My father had sought legitimacy in a title for as long as I could remember. In one wild night of passion, I had set that whole dream ablaze.
No regrets, though. Not a single fucking one.
“You might want to sit down for this, Dad,” I said.
“I’m alright,” he said, pouring himself another dash of vodka. “Not that old and weak yet!” He raised his glass.
I inhaled slowly and I ran my hand down my stubble.
“I’m serious. You better sit down.”
My father sat across from me in the pair of leather chairs that flanked the fire. He leaned forward, grabbed the poker from its hook on the hearth, and jabbed one of the logs. It broke in half and sent showers of sparks up the chimney.
I looked at my father and thought about how exactly to put this. But I’d never been one to mince words. And this was no fucking time to start.
“I wanted Valeria. So I took her for myself.”
He furrowed his massive salt-and-pepper eyebrows and blinked a few times. His cheeks were flushed with the vodka shots. Or, shit, he might actually be blushing. A lot of crime bosses were womanizers, but my father most definitely wasn’t one of them.
“Just to be clear. When you say took…” he said, trailing off.
I glanced at him briefly, then stared into the fire. Took her hard, took her long, took her deep. Took her because I needed her, wanted her, had to fucking have her.
“When I say took, I mean took,” I said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father clearly trying to suppress a smile.
He folded his hands over his stomach.
“And her…” my father trailed off, searching for the word. I knew what he was looking for—virginity, chastity, purity. Some nonsense like that. I couldn’t imagine him saying any of them, and he didn’t, because finally he asked: “Is she like she was when last I saw her?”
I turned my eyes to him and shook my head. “Definitely not.”
“And,” my father inhaled thoughtfully. “Are you?”
Fuck no, I wasn’t the same. I’d been away from her for all of four hours and I was fucking aching to see her again. Last night, everything had changed.
Completely. Forever.
“Definitely, definitely not the same as I was. I’ll never be the same again,” I said.
He spun his crystal glass of vodka slowly in his hand, serious again now, the smile replaced with a frown.
“I can’t honestly say I blame you. She reminded me very much of your mother when I first met her. All full of fire, but with the kindest heart. Not to mention beautiful.” He held his glass up, then took a sip.
To hell with beautiful. She was heaven-sent. A goddess on earth.
“Tell me about it.” I returned, the heat of the fire warming the side of my calf as I extended my fingers in a stretch then curled them into fists resting them on the arms of the chair.
“But you’ve gotten us in the shit now, son. Your brother is going to be furious. I should be furious. Truth is, I am
furious, despite it all. You’ve interfered with my plans. Our family’s plans. I had plans for that girl. Things that are in motion. Do you know what having a royal title does for this family? It raises us. It brings us new clients and new opportunities. Had you come to me and told me what you were going to do, perhaps we could have made a compromise of some kind with your brother so he could save face, but now I’m going to have a damned hard job persuading him that he should still marry her and produce children, knowing…” He cleared his throat, then finished, “where she’s been and with whom. So then. What’s the plan, my boy? How do you make this right with us? Or didn’t you think that through, before you took her for yourself?”
His anger was always like this. Even when we were children, he didn’t beat us or shout or simmer. He asked us questions, made us think about what we’d done and what we’d do differently given the chance.
Clearly I hadn’t thought about anything except getting my goddamned hands on her. But now that I had, the idea of letting her go was abhorrent to me. Setting my coffee down, I rubbed my face hard enough to see stars behind my eyelids.
“Short of sending Petre to Siberia, I’ve got no fucking clue. I barely slept. All I can think about is her. But if he so much as looks at her, Dad, I’ll fucking kill him. I swear to God. And I won’t be sorry about it.”
He carefully picked a piece of lint off of his woolen trousers and flicked it toward the fire.
“As plans go, my boy, that’s a pretty shitty one. So, just so that we’re clear, if your brother was willing to overlook her transgressions, you still wouldn’t allow this marriage to go ahead?”
“Fuck, no. No chance.”
“Then it seems to me that you’ll have to accept your fate. I may be the nominal head of this family, but even if I wanted to, I can’t protect you from your own stupidity.”
Even though I was well into my thirties, he could still make me feel like I was a little kid. Annoyed the hell out of me. But he had a point. We might be the most powerful crime family in Praque, but if I was allowed to get away with what I’d done, it would be easy to call us weak.
“There’s another option,” I said, ready to play my trump card, and raised my eyebrow. The twitch at the corner of his mouth said he understood.
He rose from his seat, and walked the length of the room to look out the window, onto the snow-tipped branches of the pine forest beyond.
“You know the old saying, son. If I scratch your back…” he said, and turned to face me, beaming.
He’d always wanted me back in the business with him, and he was about to get his wish.
“Exactly my thinking.”
“Welcome home,” my dad said, and raised his glass in a toast.
“Thank you, Father. But, now, I need you to do something for me…”
His eyes darkened but he threw back his drink and nodded.
“I need you to get a message to Valeria’s family. Let them know, there’s been a change of plans. We’ve already picked up Valeria, she is with the bridal party in preparation for the wedding. They will protest, but they will do as you ask, knowing the consequences otherwise. Tell them it’s what Petre and the family decided was necessary after her somewhat abrupt and impolite departure last night. Tell them something about making sure their collateral didn’t disappear…”
“Very well,” he agreed.
“I need some time,” I said.
“I’ll do what I can.”
“And, keep this from Petre. He has eyes and ears everywhere with his spies.” I cleared my throat, then finished. “I need one more thing…”
“Son, enough--” He shook his head but I cut him off.
“A priest.”
“I can’t stay long,” I said, leaning down to kiss my mom’s forehead. She looked paler than the last time I’d seen her, but perhaps that was just the lighting. “How are you feeling?”
“Better for seeing you.” She waved her hand. “Don’t fuss over me, I never was one for accepting fate. Illness be damned, the devil will have to drag me kicking and screaming if he wants to take me from the world anytime soon.”
I snorted a laugh. She might only have been a Greengallow by marriage, but she certainly had our temperament. Her own family weren’t exactly saints though, nor were they mild wallflowers. When my father married, it wasn’t just convenience, it was the love of a woman who gave as good as she got.
“Where’s your ring?” I asked as I sat in the chair opposite hers, taking her hand in mine.
“Pfft. That thing gets bigger by the day, keeps slipping off my finger. It’s in the box by my bed.”
I nodded. “I thought perhaps you’d given it to Petre for his wedding.”
Her eyes lit up with a smirk. “Don’t think just because I’m old and can’t easily get out of my rooms, that I don’t have eyes and ears in this house, Vasile Greengallow. You won’t convince me that you’re happy for this marriage to go ahead. Neither am I, and I won’t have the wedding ring given to me by my husband being used to shackle a girl into a loveless marriage with a slimy eel like your brother.”
My jaw nearly hit the floor at her words. I’d never heard her speak about Petre that way.
“Oh, don’t give me that look. I love Petre, of course I do. He was my baby boy once. But he’s not a good man, and I don’t mean in the same way as your father or even your grandfather. Petre has a wickedness to him that goes deeper than either of them, he’s crueler. It’s less about business and more about enjoyment.” She waved her hand. “Enough talk of him. I want to know about you. I see something in your eyes. Maybe you have someone that should be wearing that ring…”
“Mom.”
“What? Old ladies who are weak and infirm like to talk. Who is she?”
“I didn’t say there was anyone.”
“Yes, you did. Not with your words, but with your eyes, you did. So, tell me who she is.”
“I can’t.”
Her eyes sparkled and a thin smile pulled at the corner of her lips. “Oh, how delicious. Keep your secrets. It’s what you’ve always done, but a mother knows what she knows. I see love in your face, Vasile. You should take that ring.”
“What? No, I can’t. Mom, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know perfectly well what I’m saying. Have you told your father? “ She paused for only the briefest moment before nodding. “Of course. That’s good. He wants you to be happy.”
“I need to go.” I tried once more to leave without the ring but she would not have it.
“You take that ring, or you’ll break my heart.”
I sighed, nodding, and stood, kissing her on the forehead again before I went to retrieve the ring. If my father was as stubborn as a mule, she was more like a mountain. Arguing was pointless once she’d made up her mind.
Chapter 16
Valeria
The hours ticked on; I finished my oranges; I used up almost all the logs in the stack. The early dusk of winter dimmed the enormous rooms of the chilly manor house. And with each minute that passed, I got more and more furious.
How dare he dash off to wherever he’d gone, leaving me here alone and wondering? As far as he knew, I was still in his bedroom with nothing but water and a fire that by now would have burnt out without the extra logs I’d found for myself.
What an absolute jerk. He hadn’t left me a morsel to eat, hadn’t told me a thing. I never thought of myself as some spoiled-rotten princess, but whatever my title, whatever my background, I knew without question that I deserved better than this.
Huffing to myself, I considered the possibilities. The first option was dreadful.
A Greengallow family conspiracy. Maybe he’d left me here for his brother to come get later, when it suited him, just in case I decided to run off before my father could collect me. For all I knew, this manor house might even belong to Petre—when those two men had come into the bedroom they’d said Mr. Greengallow, but they had failed to mention which one.
&n
bsp; Tomorrow was supposed to be my wedding day, after all, so maybe it was all just some disgusting scheme between the two of them. Maybe some sick family tradition.
Pacing back and forth, I knew in my heart that wasn’t true. Couldn’t be. No way. What we’d shared last night was real. His hatred for his brother was also real. This wasn’t some long-game ploy to hand me over to Petre.
I prayed it wasn’t, anyway.
So the other option was that he’d left me, planning to be gone just briefly, but had gotten roped into something. He wasn’t a part of his family’s business; I knew that much. So probably it was a card game, as I’d feared. Envisioning some smoke-filled room with five burly guys ruining their families, one stack of chips at a time, I huffed and stamped on the floor, even as I considered the last—and worst—possibility.
Standing there in such luxurious surroundings, I almost couldn’t bring myself to face it. But it had to be thought through. It could have happened to him. Something terrible. A riding accident, an avalanche, some twisted crime-family vendetta that had ended up with him dead in an icy ravine somewhere, bleeding and alone.
The thought of that, of his being injured or worse, rattled me right down to my very core. I let my head drop. Gambler though he was, inconsiderate though he might be, I had to face the truth that I wanted him; I was drawn to him. I had to have him. And thinking back to last night made my heart actually throb.
Heavy footsteps made my heart shoot into my throat, wondering if the men from earlier had returned and were possibly on their way to find me and turf me out into the cold as a squatter. But what could I do except exactly the same as I’d done before? I dove for the wardrobe and slipped inside.
And I didn’t have to wait long.
“Daniel?” Vasile’s powerful voice carried to me before I saw the door flung wide, his muscle-bound form filling the doorway. “Valeria?” He lowered his voice as he added, almost to himself, “Where the hell are they?”
My heart soared at seeing him, and I flung the wardrobe door wide, seeing his surprise as I spilled out into the room and flung my arms around him. Despite everything, I was ecstatic at seeing him alive and well.
Wild Heir (Fated Royals Book 4) Page 11