Royally Tamed

by Diana Ames

  “Why is this so important to you? Why did I have to dredge through all those old memories? Was it just to satisfy your curiosity?”

  “Alondra,” Anton said hesitantly. He didn’t know if he wanted her to know what he’d just found out. He didn’t know if she would want to know. “You never had any idea who your father might be?”

  “I was only four. I kept trying to tell the police that my father was a king or something and that he killed my mother. They didn’t believe me, and even if they had, by the time I was able to answer their questions, I’m sure it would have been too late. Would you stick around in a foreign country if you’d just murdered your bastard’s mother?”

  “Alondra…” His voice was pained. “If you could find out who your father was, would you want to?”

  “Why?” she snorted. “It’s not like he’ll ever be brought to justice for what he did to my mother. If he really were royalty, he would be covered under diplomatic immunity, especially if he could prove that she threatened him.” Sitting back down at the table, she reached for the plate of bacon. “Besides, even in a perfect world I could never live the way you do.”

  Anton just stared at her as she munched on the crispy bacon. He was torn in two. He didn’t want to tell her for his own selfish reasons and maybe even a few unselfish ones. On the other hand, she had a right to know. But how do I tell someone I’ve just met, someone who hates royalty, that she’s a member of the Colania royal family?

  CHAPTER 23

  Anton knocked hard on the apartment door in front of him. He’d left a pissed off Alondra locked in his apartment with two security guards standing outside the door. She was angry because he hadn’t listened to any of her questions or explained anything about Dominic or Gilly—at least that was what she’d shouted at him through the bathing chamber door. But he was just too disturbed by her history and what he’d learned to try to answer sensitive questions.

  “Wally,” he said, giving her a quick hard hug when she opened the door, “can I come in?”

  Wally stepped back and invited him into the apartment. Walking into the foyer, he could see Ryan sitting with a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. He shot the big man a wave and turned around to face Wally.

  “I need your help,” he said.

  “Come sit down then. Have some coffee,” Wally said. Leading him into the kitchen, she shoved him toward a chair and grabbed another mug. “Now, what’s on your mind?”

  “It’s Alondra,” he said with a look of pure misery on his face.

  “I want nothing to do with that homewrecker,” Wally said stubbornly. “In my opinion, you should have kicked her out of the country as soon as she got here.”

  “She hasn’t done anything wrong, Wally. Yes, she’s nosy and a pain in the ass, but everything else was Damian’s doing, not hers,” Anton said defensively.

  “Well, I still say if she’d minded her own damn business, all these problems would have been avoided.”

  “Why are you here, Anton?” Ryan asked in his calm way, effectively ending the angry exchange that was beginning to get out of hand. “I’m fairly certain it wasn’t to argue with Wally.”

  “I found out some things,” Anton said with a sigh. “I have no clue what to do.”

  They looked at him expectantly.

  “Alondra is not who we thought,” he said. For the next twenty minutes, he relayed everything he’d figured out.

  “So, her father—some supposed royal guy—murdered her mother, and Alondra ended up being abused in foster care?” Wally asked.

  “There’s one thing I haven’t told you yet,” Anton told her. “Damian broke her nose—accidentally, of course—but when the bleeding wouldn’t stop, I took her over to medical. Our doctors discovered that she has a blood disorder—common here but not where she’s from—and she needed a transfusion.”

  “Okay…what am I missing?” Ryan asked.

  “I had the doctor do a preliminary DNA workup of her blood against all those on file from the Colania royal family, beginning with mine,” Anton said. “My father has been to New York, and while I can’t imagine him as a murderer, I already have one sister I didn’t know existed.”

  “You did all of this just because Alondra has a disease?” Wally asked, astounded.

  “No, because her blood type showed the antigen that has only been found in the royal family. Every single member, no matter how distant or how diluted the blood, has this anomaly in their blood.” With agitation, Anton ran his hands through his hair. “There are only two ways she could have the antigen. One would be through a blood transfusion that wasn’t screened properly, but that’s farfetched due to the carriers of the antigen.”

  “Or the other would be if she were a member of the royal family,” Wally finished for him. “Have you gotten the test results?”

  “Yes,” Anton said. “She is about as closely related to me as my mother and father were to each other. She’s as close as we assumed Gilly to be to me, a fifth or sixth cousin several times removed. I have further testing going on as we speak to find out just what branch of the family Alondra belongs to. If her father is alive, I’m going to get answers.”

  “So, what do you need from us?” Wally asked.

  “You know about me—well, my beast?” Anton asked hesitantly.

  “Are you saying you want to hurt this woman?” Ryan sat up straight, instantly alert.

  “No! I think she’s my punishment,” Anton said miserably. “When she was stuck in that flashback, whimpering and struggling…I’ve been the one to cause that kind of reaction before. I was nearly incapacitated. I had no idea what to do.”

  “You said she wouldn’t even admit she was abused or raped?” Wally questioned.

  “But I know she was, and she needs help or at least a friend,” he said. “A member of my family did this to her, murdered her mother and threw Alondra into a system that chewed her up and spit her back out.”

  “God save me from the guilty conscience,” Wally muttered. “Look, Anton, I hate to tell you that you’re on your own here—”

  “Then, help me,” Anton broke in before she could refuse. “Just spend some time with Alondra and talk to her.”

  “I’ll think about it, but don’t count on it,” Wally said. “If you really want to help her, if you really believe that she’s your ‘punishment,’”—Wally made quotation marks in the air—“then perhaps you’re the one who’s supposed to help her.”

  “I don’t know how to do that!” Anton yelled. “I don’t even know if I should tell her who she really is!”

  “Well then, you’ve got some things to figure out, don’t you?” Wally said sarcastically. “I’m not a head doctor. I don’t know the answers to those questions either.”

  “I’ll spend some time with her,” Ryan volunteered. “I’m working over at the club during the afternoons and evenings while Damian’s away, but I’ll spend the mornings with her.”

  “Thank you,” Anton said, lowering his head to the table. “Thank you so much.”

  ***

  Alondra was pacing the apartment in a fury. After Anton had insisted on dragging her down memory lane, he’d tuned out and refused to even listen to her questions. Then, he’d had the nerve to leave the apartment and lock her in. When she’d tried to leave to get some of her own things, she’d come face-to-face with two security guards who had told her in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Now, she was pacing, waiting for Anton to show his beautiful face so that she could punch him in it. She stopped pacing and shook herself slightly. Why did I just think of him as beautiful? He was arrogant and obnoxious and rude. And he was holding her prisoner—not just in the country but in his apartment as well. Anger back in place, she began the walk up and down the hallway again.

  Alondra had been alone for over an hour when the door finally opened. She ceased movement and waited just outside the foyer for him to enter. She had lined up various items on a table in the hallway to throw at
his head if he refused to be reasonable, and she was looking forward to testing her pitch.

  ***

  Anton cautiously entered the apartment. When he’d released the guards, they had told him Alondra had tried to leave. He knew she was already furious with him for taking off and not answering any of her questions, so he could just imagine the lather she’d worked up when she realized she was virtually his prisoner.

  Poking his head inside the door, he glanced around the foyer. He didn’t see her immediately, and he allowed his body to relax as he entered the apartment. He closed and locked the door behind him, only to be startled by her sharp question.

  “So, you’ve decided to come back and check on the prisoner?” Alondra asked sarcastically.

  Anton jumped and felt his heart start to race. “Holy shit! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” he yelled at her.

  “Fuck you!” she screamed back at him. “I want answers, and I want to go home! You can’t just keep me locked up here forever, you know. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “That has yet to be determined, doesn’t it? I’d say you’ve done quite a bit wrong! You had DNA reports on members of the royal family. Did you get permission to run those tests? How did you get samples?”

  “I want to go home! This place is insane and backward and just fucked-up! I’ve had nothing but grief since I got here, and according to your doctors, I now have some fucking crazy disease!” Alondra sucked in a deep breath. “I want to get off this godforsaken island and go home!”

  “You’d better get used to this godforsaken island and all our insanity and backwardness, sweetheart,” he said menacingly. “For the time being, this is your home.”

  With a shrill shriek, Alondra picked up a peach from a pile of items on the side table and launched it at his head. It seemed to piss her off that it had missed him and thumped harmlessly against the wall, so she grabbed a glass and threw it as well. Anton thought he saw a satisfied smile cross her lips at the sound of the breaking glass; and then she began flinging projectiles at his head, one after another.

  “What the fuck is your problem?” he yelled while dodging and ducking flying fruit, dishes, and silverware.

  “You’re my problem!” she screamed, finally out of ammunition. “You and your attitude and the way this whole country works! You are not better than anyone else! You have no right to make me stay here when all I want to do is go home! You have no right to deny your son his father or Gillian her child! You are not God!”

  Anton watched helplessly as she collapsed on the floor in a heap, her anger spent and all her energy gone. He had a feeling that it was just too much for her to deal with in one day. If it had been me having flashbacks and rehashing a childhood trauma, I would be running to Dr. Servo.

  “Are you done?” Anton asked, coming to stand over Alondra. Part of him wanted to get on his knees and comfort her, but a bigger part of him was struggling to contain his anger at being attacked. He had enough self-control to realize that if they both gave into their rage, it wouldn’t just be glass and fruit lying in pieces on the floor. It was obvious that Alondra wasn’t going to be the rational one.

  When she looked up at him, his anger evaporated. The tear streaks down her face told him just how distraught she really was. The hopeless, wild look in her eyes made her seem exactly like the cornered animal he’d thought she was that morning. With a sigh, he reached down, and as if she were a child who’d fallen, he lifted her to her feet by her armpits.

  “How long have you been pretending you were tough, wearing the mask of a warrior, and hiding the hurt woman you really are?” he whispered, moving close to hold her up.

  “All my life,” she answered.

  “You are still weak from your illness,” he told her, guiding her into the living room and pushing her onto the sofa. “Rest,” he said gently. “I will be here when you awake. We have a great deal to discuss.”

  ***

  Anton was quietly sitting in his overstuffed chair when Alondra finally awoke. It had been nearly two hours since her breakdown. He’d spent two hours watching her struggle against invisible foes, wondering what it was about her that made him want to hold her to him and protect her from the world.

  “There’s a glass of water on the table if you’re thirsty,” he said. “But you have to promise not to throw it at me.”

  “Sorry about that,” Alondra said with embarrassment. She sat up on the sofa and tucked her legs beneath her. “I don’t usually lose my temper like that. Everything has just been so—”

  “Overwhelming,” he finished her sentence. He watched as she nodded and took a sip of the water. “What do you know about the history of Colania?”

  “Not much,” she admitted. “There wasn’t much available on the Internet, and I didn’t have time to do a lot of deep digging. When I found out it was an English-speaking country, I packed my bags.”

  “We are very out of touch with the modern world,” he said, nodding. “To be honest, we like it that way. Our heritage is primarily Greek, but much of that was lost centuries ago. We were a country of tribes, each tribe having its own rulers. I believe it was Spanish explorers who found us first and began occupation. The Spanish lived peacefully within the tribes. They didn’t try to take over and change anything. They just gradually assimilated their culture into ours.

  “Then, the English came. It was a bloody mess, leaving half of the island dead. My own ancestors were some kind of British royalty and placed themselves on the throne here. This castle and the surrounding walls were all their doing. People were so tired and beaten down that they finally surrendered to the new rulers. There has been peace here, if not progress, ever since.

  “My own father implemented some modernization, but he traveled extensively, and the country suffered for his absence. He wasn’t around to see that projects were completed or that contractors finished jobs. He lost touch with his people. He was the first king to leave the country for more than education, and he’ll be the last.”

  “Why are you not the king?” Alondra asked him.

  “I am the crowned prince, which is basically the same thing as king. I will receive the title of king upon my marriage. At that time, my wife will also be elevated to be the queen. Even upon my death, she would remain the queen.”

  “And if she remarried?” Alondra was uncomfortable with the idea of his marriage even though one didn’t exist yet.

  “Her husband would be acting king until a crowned prince came of age, and any of their children would be royalty as well. That is how Damian is a royal prince,” he explained.

  “This whole monarchy system is so confusing,” she said, rubbing her temples. “I’m an intelligent woman, but this has my head spinning.”

  “There are many branches of the royal family tree,” Anton explained. “In fact, my mother was distantly related to my father.” At the horrified look on her face, he rushed to explain, “It was so distant that even your country would not have had a problem with their marriage. Your country probably wouldn’t even have recognized them as relatives, but it works differently here.

  “Here, if you are even a hundred times removed from the royal family but still have a spec of royal blood, you are royal. That doesn’t always grant you the title of a prince or princess, but you do have leverage as a member of the royal family.”

  “So, the spec of royal blood in your mother made Damian a prince even though the king was not his father?” she asked.

  “No. My mother being the queen made Damian a prince. As soon as a woman marries a royal prince, her bloodline is automatically put into the royal family. My parents’ marriage elevated them to the king and queen. Damian, being only the queen’s child, was not in line for the throne until I acknowledged him as my brother and heir, but he and Mellissandra were still a royal prince and princess. Their children are also prince and princess.”

  “Are you going to finally tell me the truth about that whole situation?” Alondra asked him. “I alrea
dy know he’s your son. What harm is there in telling me your side of the story?”

  Anton ran his hands through his hair and sighed.

  “And stop doing that,” she snapped.

  He gave her a strange look.

  She explained, “That nervous habit you have of messing with your hair, you need to stop.” She wasn’t about to tell him that it only made him look sexier or that it turned her on in ways she’d never felt before.

  He chuckled a little but stopped mussing his hair. Assuming a very serious look, he said, “I’ll tell you everything—on one condition.”

  “What’s the condition?” she asked warily.

  “You can’t take it public.”

  CHAPTER 24

  “You know that’s ridiculous, right?” Alondra said. “I already have enough information to go public with the story. I’m giving you an opportunity to put your side out there as well.”

  “You have no proof right now,” Anton retorted hotly. “Are you really going to risk your career on rumors?”

  Alondra took a deep breath. “I talked to Gillian. She’s the one who told me how to get the testing done. Even though you took the first set of results, I’m sure I can get copies.”

  “How did you get in?” he asked, jumping to his feet. “She’s supposed to be sequestered from everyone but her doctors.”

  “Does that really matter right now?” Alondra asked him. “You know, Anton, secrets and lies are only good for one thing, and that is, coming back to bite you in the ass when you least expect it.”

  “I’ll deal with the security breach later, for now just hear me out,” Anton said, sitting back down. “When you realize how many lives this could destroy…” He shook his head and plowed his fingers into his hair. “I can only hope you’ll listen to reason.”

  “I’m a very reasonable person,” Alondra said. “But I am also a just person. From what I currently know, justice is not what has happened here.”

  “You know,” Anton said, sitting back, “there is so much more at work right now than you realize. Lives hang in the balance with every word out of my mouth.” He wasn’t just referring to Dominic or Gilly or even himself, but Alondra’s life was currently resting in his hands as well. If he chose to tell her of her lineage, it would change her forever.