“He’s not a good man,” Hugh said softly. “He tried to take the Queen down.”
“I’m not calling you a liar,” I said evenly. “But whatever damage Christian did to the realm, it’s clearly been dealt with.” I waved a hand. “My grandmother still reigns and statues are still being erected.”
“He’s done terrible things to your family.”
His mention of my family was like an uncomfortable bedspring popping into my back. “They’re no longer my family,” I reminded him, trying hard for breezy and unconcerned. “It’s in the first chapter of the disownment manual. Now. Are we going back to Felice’s or not?”
Finally, he nodded, and my knees softened like melted butter. I had to reach out and grab the poster of bed to steady myself. I hadn’t realized I had locked them into place while I was confronting him and acting oh-so-tough.
“We’ll leave in thirty,” he said. Then he gave me a pointed look. “And I’ll take this,” he said, snapping the tablet’s cord from the wall and slipping the tablet underneath his arm.
Several hours later, we were on the dark road leading to my mother’s villa. Hugh was driving, and pulled off into a dirt lane that seemed to go nowhere.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he got out of the car. “We’re not there yet?!”
He popped the trunk and withdrew something from it. “Konnor?” I asked in vain, somehow knowing that his plans and mine were probably not going to align. “What are you doing?”
I opened the car door, scrambled out and saw exactly what I feared—the glint of a gun barrel in the last rays of sunset. “Konnor—we had this worked out. I told Christian in the email that I was going to meet with him…alone.”
He looked at me like I had suggested that the Driedish national football team retire en masse and take up ballet dancing. “In what world do you think that’s going to happen? Let me remind you, Your Highness, that I don’t have to do anything Christian Fraser-Campbell suggests.” He gave me a pointed glare. “Or you.”
“Wait.” I was confused. Was he conceding that I was no longer royal—and thus it was no longer his duty to protect me? Or was he simply saying that he could ignore me if he wished?
I had to admit, I found that I did not care for either possibility, which was a tad concerning, if I thought about it too long.
Which I wouldn’t. Because I had yet another battle of wills to win with Hugh “Tough Stubborn Guy out of a Fifties Hollywood Movie” Konnor.
“I don’t want you to use a gun,” I said, thinking that was fairly diplomatic of me. A nice starting point for negotiations, really.
“Too bad,” he snarled.
“No guns.” I added extra emphasis this time, for clarity’s sake.
Konnor made a show of looking down the barrel, off into the distance, checking…something…out. What, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t the sportsman that my father was, nor the royal marine that my brother was. Guns were completely foreign to me.
“Please.” My voice broke. “Just—”
Konnor didn’t let me finish. “This is how it’s going to be. You made this arrangement your way, so I’m going to take it from here and do it my way. Against my instincts, training and plain good common sense, I brought you here to meet with Christian. But there’s no way you’re taking one step on to your mother’s property without me checking it out first”—he waved the gun in his hand—“my way.”
I swallowed. Of course, I had always known that my bodyguards were experts, had always respected their training and acumen, but there was also always a tension in the relationship. They were in charge of my safety, yes, but I was in charge of…well, had it been the eighteenth century, I would have been in charge of their country. The power balance always tended to tilt in the royal family’s favor.
And here we were. This is what it felt like when the power tilted back. When the employee refused to defer. When the subject refused to bow.
There was nothing to be done about it. How many times had I insisted to Konnor that I wasn’t a princess anymore? Wasn’t even a royal? Now, I would demand his obedience?
It would be ludicrous, and I wouldn’t be so pig-headed. No, if I wanted him to treat me like an independent adult, I had to return the favor. We were a team.
…a team.
Hugh Konnor and I.
What the hell had happened here?
He was glaring at me with a gun in his hand. A man who was ready to do violence, who wasn’t buying any of my bullshit. Well, not tonight. Maybe I should have been intimidated by him, by the threat he could represent.
But…
The word “team” had quickly planted roots in my mind. It seemed as solid and true as a hundred-year-old oak. And I liked the idea of Hugh and me joining forces. Fighting crime. Building something together.
“Okay,” I said softly. “You go in first. Tell me what I need to do.”
He cocked his head. His eyebrows scraped together. “No fucking around, Caroline. I’m serious. You stay where I tell you, when I tell you, until I tell you to move.”
Caroline.
First-name basis. Like partners.
I nodded. “I got it. I want this to work, truly I do. I’ll listen to you, I promise.”
There was a deep disbelief in Hugh’s expression, so of course I had to address it. “Look, I don’t know why you don’t believe me—”
“It’s hard to figure that one out,” he scoffed.
“Your sarcasm is unnecessary,” I informed him. “I’m not a willful child. I’m a grown woman who can make her own decisions—”
“Like eloping with a man-child race car driver.”
Huh. Someone had an opinion on my marriage. Join the club with ten thousand members. “I make my own decisions,” I repeated. “And tonight I’m deciding to do as you wish.”
He tilted his head, as if trying to comprehend the strange words coming out of my mouth.
“Call it a…truce.” I crossed my arms, as if that could protect my heart from further rejection by Hugh Konnor. “Let’s try it. One night where I listen to you and you don’t despise me.”
“What…” He stopped, then started again. “Whatever gave you the idea that I hate you?” His voice was a low burr and his expression was indecipherable. “Because I…” Another pause, a brief press of his lips. “I don’t.”
“Oh.” I said, more of a breath than a sound.
A flash of something bright crossed his face—something like the interest of the opposite sex—and then it was gone. Which meant it was surely a trick of the fading light or lingering echoes of my own teenaged delusions. “Good,” he said shortly, then he motioned at the car. “Get in and lock the door.”
“Where are you going?”
His eyes were defiant. “To kill Christian Fraser-Campbell.”
Chapter Sixteen
I was obedient for nearly fifteen minutes.
In my defense, the car got stuffy. And my former bodyguard—now teammate who didn’t hate me—was heading off to murder someone.
MURDER.
Was I supposed to be calm about that? Accepting? I don’t know about non-royal families, but in mine I was not brought up to sit idly by while a murder is committed. What, exactly, I was supposed to do about a murder threat was never covered in Royal Princess 101, but I was fairly certain that waiting in a car on a remote Italian lane was not remotely effective at stopping anything.
So I started walking through the grass, tracing the route up the hill, taking care to be as quiet as I could. The sun had set now, the light was fading fast, but I saw a few lights on in the main villa, ahead.
What would Felice do?
That was a strange thought. My mother? My mother, Lady Felice Sevine-Laurent, would not be walking through the dirt and dry winter grass, that was for sure.
No, she would sashay into her own villa, call out Ch
ristian’s name and declare that she was parched. Do be a dear and find some champagne.
It was tempting. But I would never possess the self-confidence of my mother.
Also, Hugh Konnor would have my head if I so blatantly disregarded his instructions.
There was another alternative. A nearby loggia, built into the hillside next to a swimming pool that was currently covered for the winter.
It was the perfect spot for a lookout, I thought as I ducked under the tiled roof. Exactly where a good partner would station herself, to keep an eye on her buddy’s six. Whatever that was.
I partially stood behind a stone column and had a clear view of the house below. For a few minutes, there was nothing but cold wind and a half-moonlit landscape.
And then.
I heard them first. Low, rumbly voices.
Speaking in Driedish.
Out of the shadows came five of the burly policemen I had seen at the train station when Hugh had tried to double-cross me.
Every muscle and fiber in my body went tense. I wanted to scream. But what? To whom?
I gulped deep breaths. Focus, Caroline. Why was I here?
Why were they here?
We’d come to meet with Christian Fraser-Campbell.
Hugh had come to murder him.
Simple goals, if a bit violent.
So why the entourage?
The crew tried the door, as if they were expecting it to be open. One said something about checking out the back and then they split up.
I was so intent on trying to make out the figures in the dark that I didn’t smell the cigar until it was too late and the man was right beside me.
I froze, terror whipping around me. “Christian?” I whispered, but my brain knew it wasn’t the man who had been my sister’s fiancé.
He was stockier, darker, somehow more ordinary and more malevolent both at once. Of course, that could have something to do with the high-tech rifle he had slung over his shoulder.
“No,” the man said out of the side of his mouth, with a Slavic accent of some sort. Russian? Ukrainian? “But I have something from him.” His hand extended, a shadow draped in black. “Go on,” he urged. “It won’t bite.”
A chuckle. Like the gun-wielding man hiding in the dark thought this was funny. It wasn’t funny. The very opposite.
Don’t do it. Hugh’s voice in my head. Run.
But we were so damn close…
I took the item from the man. It was a disposable cell phone.
“He’s waiting,” he said.
I held the phone up to my ear. “H—he—hello?”
“Caroline? Hello again. It’s been too long.” It was Christian. He spoke Driedish with his Scottish accent. It was charming, almost disarming.
“Where are you?” I moved my head cautiously around, not wanting to take my eyes off the Ukrainian who was now casually sighting his weapon, giving it little strokes and pats, like it was his pet.
“I’m afraid I’ve been delayed a bit. Once my colleague Sergei there informed me of the Driedish police who were camped out on your mother’s beautiful lawn, I felt it was unwise for me to show my face.”
“I didn’t know they were coming,” I promised, suddenly aware of the danger I was in. But whether the danger was greater from the cigar-smoking assassin or from the Driedish police officers, I wasn’t sure. “I wanted to meet with you, find out your story, just like we talked about.”
This was true, I realized. As much as I had been begging and wheedling Konnor to leave me the hell alone, I was also now thoroughly invested in whatever this mystery was. I wanted to know why I had been dragged into it. How I could bring it to a conclusion.
“Yes, perhaps you didn’t,” Christian mused. “After all, I was the one who invited them to the house.”
I didn’t understand. “But you said you wanted to talk in private.”
“Oh, I do. That’s why Sergei has given you this phone. So we can chat whenever we want.”
“But—” I swung round as a loud ch-chuck came from Sergei’s rifle. He was pointing it at the house. “What are you doing?” I demanded, either of Sergei or Christian.
The Ukrainian ignored me. Pulled the trigger.
Maybe I screamed. It was hard to tell with the blast echoing under the loggia.
I dropped the phone. Spun toward the villa. Squinted in the dark. How could the Ukrainian see? It was all shadows and specters down there.
Was that a body slumped next to the door? “No…” I breathed.
More figures, running out into the night. Slow motion. Spinning. Metal glinting. There.
They see us.
Bang!
Stone splinters around me.
Bang! Right in my ear.
Rat-tat-tat. Like a distant nail gun at a construction site, but the rhythm and pitch were all wrong.
Dust and dirt sprayed over me.
I clutched my hands over my ears right before another spurt: more shots. My heart was in my throat. Clogging my airway, choking the scream that was desperate to be let loose.
The Ukrainian had ducked behind another column. Taking a rest, my brain interpreted. A moment of silence, I dared to hope that the violence was over, there was another rat-tat-tat. Then Sergei pulled something out of his pocket. Glanced over at me. I will never forget what happened next. In the shade and horror, he winked at me. Then a brilliant burst of a fireball reaching into the rural Italian sky. The explosion swallowed my mother’s villa in one single cloud, leaving nothing in its wake.
I was on my knees. Landed hard, I didn’t care. Stunned. Not believing I was seeing this. Refusing to believe that he could be gone.
Him.
Hugh.
Where was Hugh?
But there was only crackling and hissing from the fire. Smoke and ash in the air. No movement except from flames and the tumbling of debris.
The Ukrainian gave me one cold once-over then methodically started to check his weapon. Was there one last bullet for me?
I pulled myself up to my unsteady feet. Not ready to die on my knees—not here.
“You’re going to pay for this,” I said in a shaky voice. “You won’t get away with murder.”
The Ukrainian lifted his eyebrows, like I had surprised him. Like he was scared of me.
Good.
Then he was shot in the neck.
The shot had come from behind me.
Sergei crumpled, an expression of incredulity on his frozen face. He hadn’t been scared of me, he had been scared by a ferocious Driedish bear.
I turned, stumbled and headed straight into Hugh’s arms. Instantly, he locked them tight around me, giving me exactly what I needed. A safe, sturdy place to land. I felt his hands glide down my back, his face pressed against my hair. He murmured something incomprehensible and tightened his grip on me.
And I felt again.
The doors unlocked, the gates opened and it all came flooding back. Pain, panic, fear, rage, lust.
The explosion on the thirty-second lap of the Slovenian Grand Prix. My mother’s house in a fireball. A terrified sob broke from me. This was what happened when I dared to step outside of my prison. Destruction. Death. Chaos.
My nose buried into Hugh’s chest. I took a shaky inhale to steady myself, but it had the opposite effect. The scent of him—sweat and smoke and cedar—made my head spin, my heart flip like a kite on a stormy day. Here was the one man in the world who wouldn’t have me, and he was the center of everything for me at this moment.
Here, Hugh made sense. Here, there was protection. There was…
An anchor.
I had never been ultra-adept at following commands, but if an archangel had fallen from heaven at this point and ordered me to stay in Hugh Konnor’s embrace for the rest of my life, I would have readily agreed
.
But all good things come to an end. And before I knew it, Hugh was shifting his weight, as if he was readying himself to pull away from me.
I clutched at his jacket. “No.” It was a woman’s pitiful plea. His hands caught mine, overwhelming them, soothing.
“Caroline,” he said gruffly. “We can’t stay here. We have to leave.”
I knew he was right. Run! Go! My native survival skills were screaming at me right now. But first.
“What about him?” I asked about the lifeless man on the ground.
Hugh looked over my shoulder, and his mouth set. “Right. I should tie him up.”
He squeezed my hands one last time and pulled away, going toward Sergei.
“You mean, he’s not dead?”
“No. It was a dart.” Hugh plucked a tiny needle from Sergei’s neck. “I’m not going to kill a man until I know what I can get from him.”
“Oh, of course. Naturally,” I said as I plucked Christian’s cell phone from the ground, taking advantage of the fact that Hugh’s attention was distracted by the zip ties he was putting around the Ukrainian’s hands. Then he started patting the man down, before ripping his vest and shirt open.
It was dark, we were both probably shell-shocked, but there was no denying that the tattoo on Sergei’s chest was an identical twin to the one I had seen on Christian’s.
I swore. So did Hugh, but then I noticed he was flinching, holding his side. I swore louder. “You’re hurt,” I said as I went to him, tried to help pull him up.
“I’m fine,” he said through gritted teeth.
But I was searching for his injury, and when he hissed, I demanded, “Were you shot?” I weaved. No. This was not happening.
“I’m fine,” he repeated, and to be fair, I was the one who was clutching at a stone column and gasping for air. I didn’t do well around blood. It was why I hadn’t gone to medical school. Also, having a princess for a physician would have probably made patients uncomfortable.
I tried focusing on something else to take my mind off…Hugh’s possible gunshot wound.
Yeah, my mother’s still-smoldering villa was not exactly calming, and it made me ask, “The authorities…will they be coming?”
The Royal Bodyguard Page 10