Because if Natalie was having Rodolfo’s baby, there was no possible way that Valentina could marry him. The choice—though it had always been more of an expected duty than a choice—was taken out of her hands.
“You will marry him,” Valentina had said quietly. “It is what must happen.”
Natalie had looked pale. “But you... And I’m not... And you don’t understand, he...”
“All of that will work out,” Valentina had said with a deep certainty she very badly wanted to feel. Because it had to work out. “The important thing is that you will marry him in the morning. You will have his baby and you will be his queen when he ascends the throne. Everything else is spin and scandal, and none of that matters. Not really.”
And so it was.
Once King Geoffrey had been brought into the loop and had been faced with the irrefutable evidence that his daughter had been stolen from him all those years ago—that Erica had taken Natalie and, not only that, had told Geoffrey that Valentina’s twin had died at birth—he was more than on board with switching the brides at the wedding.
He’d announced to the gathered crowd that a most blessed miracle had occurred some months before. A daughter long thought dead had returned to him to take her rightful place in the kingdom, and they’d all kept it a secret to preserve everyone’s privacy as they’d gotten to know each other.
Including Rodolfo, who had always been meant to be part of the family, the king had reminded the assembled crowd and the whole of the world, no matter how. And feelings had developed between Natalie and Rodolfo, where there had only ever been duty and honor between Valentina and her intended.
Valentina had seen this and stepped aside of her own volition, King Geoffrey had told the world. There had been no scandal, no sneaking around, no betrayals. Only one sister looking out for another.
The crowds ate it up. The world followed suit. It was just scandalous enough to be both believable and newsworthy. Valentina was branded as something of a Miss Lonely Hearts, it was true, but that was neither here nor there. The idea that she would sacrifice her fairy-tale wedding—and her very own Prince Charming—for her long-lost sister captured the public’s imagination. She was more popular than ever, especially at home in Murin.
And this was a good thing, because now that her father had two heirs, he could marry one of his daughters off to fulfill his promises to the kingdom of Tissely, and he could prepare the other to take over Murin and keep its throne in the family.
And just like that, Valentina went from a lifetime preparing to be a princess who would marry well and support the king of a different country, to a new world in which she was meant to rule as queen in her own right.
If it was another trap, another cage, it was a far more spacious and comfortable one than any she had known before.
She knew that. There was no reason at all she should have been so unhappy.
“Your attention continues to drift, daughter,” King Geoffrey said then.
Valentina snapped herself out of those thoughts in her head that did her no good and into the car where she sat with her father, en route to some or other glittering gala down at the water palace on the harbor. She couldn’t even remember which charity it was this week. There was always another.
The motorcade wound down from the castle, winding its way along the hills of the beautiful capital city toward the gleaming Mediterranean Sea. Valentina normally enjoyed the view. It was pretty, first and foremost. It was home. It reminded her of so many things, of her honor and her duty and her love of her country. It renewed her commitment to her kingdom, and made her think about all the good she hoped she could do as its sovereign.
And yet these days, she wasn’t thinking about Murin. All she could seem to think about was Achilles.
“I am preparing myself for the evening ahead,” Valentina replied calmly enough. She aimed a perfectly composed smile at her father. “I live in fear of greeting a diplomat with the wrong name and causing an international incident.”
Her father’s gaze warmed, something that happened more often lately than it ever had before. Valentina chalked that up to the rediscovery of Natalie and, with it, some sense of family that had been missing before. Or too caught up in the past, perhaps.
“I have never seen you forget a name in all your life,” Geoffrey said. “It’s one among many reasons I expect you will make a far better queen than I have been a king. And I am aware I gave you no other choice, but I cannot regret that your education and talents will be Murin’s gain, not Tissely’s.”
“I will confess,” Valentina said then, “that stepping aside so that Natalie could marry Rodolfo is not quite the sacrifice some have made it out to be.”
Her father’s gaze then was so canny that it reminded her that whatever else he was, King Geoffrey of Marin was a force to be reckoned with.
“I suspected not,” he said quietly. “But there is no reason not to let them think so. It only makes you more sympathetic.”
His attention was caught by something on his phone then. And as he frowned down at it, Valentina looked away. Back out the window to watch the sun drip down over the red-tipped rooftops that sloped all the way to the crystal blue waters below.
She let her hand move, slowly so that her father wouldn’t notice, and held it over that faint roundness low in her belly she’d started to notice only a few weeks ago.
If her father thought she was a sympathetic figure now, she thought darkly, he would be delighted when she announced to him and the rest of the world that she was going to be a mother.
A single mother. A princess destined for his throne, with child.
Her thoughts went around and around, keeping her up at night and distracting her by day. And there were never any answers or, rather, there were never any good answers. There were never any answers she liked. Shame and scandal were sure to follow anything she did, or didn’t do for that matter. There was no possible way out.
And even if she somehow summoned the courage to tell her father, then tell the kingdom, and then, far more intimidating, tell Achilles—what did she think might happen then? As a princess with no path to the throne, she had been expected to marry the Crown Prince of Tissely. As the queen of Murin, by contrast, she would be expected to marry someone of equally impeccable lineage. There were only so many such men alive, Valentina had met all of them, and none of them were Achilles.
No one was Achilles. And that shouldn’t have mattered to her. There were so many other things she needed to worry about, like this baby she was going to be able to hide for only so long.
But he was the only thing she could seem to think about, even so.
The gala was as expected. These things never varied much, which was both their charm and their curse. There was an endless receiving line. There were music and speeches, and extremely well-dressed people milling about complimenting each other on the same old things. A self-congratulatory trill of laughter here, a fake smile there, and so it went. Dignitaries and socialites rubbing shoulders and making money for this or that cause the way they always did.
Valentina danced with her father, as tradition dictated. She was pleased to see Rodolfo and Natalie, freshly back from their honeymoon and exuding exactly the sort of happy charm that made everyone root for them, Valentina included.
Valentina especially, she thought.
She excused herself from the crush as soon as she could, making her way out onto one of the great balconies in this water palace that took its cues from far-off Venice and overlooked the sea. Valentina stood there for a long while, helplessly reliving all the things she’d been so sure she could lock away once she came back home. Over and over—
And she thought that her memory had gotten particularly sharp—and cruel. Because when she heard a foot against the stones behind her and turned, her smile already in place the way it alwa
ys was, she saw him.
But it couldn’t be him, of course. She assumed it was her hormones mixing with her memory and making her conjure him up out of the night air.
“Princess Valentina,” Achilles said, and his voice was low, a banked fury simmering there in every syllable. “I do not believe we have been introduced properly. You are apparently of royal blood you sought to conceal and I am the man you thought you could fool. How pleasant to finally make your acquaintance.”
It occurred to her that she wasn’t fantasizing at the same moment it really hit her that he was standing before her. Her heart punched at her. Her stomach sank.
And in the place she was molten for him, instantly, she ached. Oh, how she ached.
“Achilles...”
But her throat was so dry. It was in marked contrast to all that emotion that flooded her eyes at the sight of him that she couldn’t seem to control.
“Are those tears, Princess?” And he laughed then. It was a dark, angry sort of sound. It was not the kind of laughter that made the world shimmer and change. And still, it was the best sound Valentina had heard in weeks. “Surely those are not tears. I cannot think of a single thing you have to cry about, Valentina. Not one. Whereas I have a number of complaints.”
“Complaints?”
All she could seem to do was echo him. That and gaze at him as if she was hungry, and the truth was that she was. She couldn’t believe he was here. She didn’t care that he was scowling at her—her heart was kicking at her, and she thought she’d never seen anything more beautiful than Achilles Casilieris in a temper, right here in Murin.
“We can start with the fact that you lied to me about who you are,” he told her. “There are numerous things to cover after that, culminating in your extremely bad decision to walk out. Walk out.” He repeated it with three times the fury. “On me.”
“Achilles.” She swallowed, hard. “I don’t think—”
“Let me be clear,” he bit out, his dark gold gaze blazing as he interrupted her. “I am not here to beg or plead. I am Achilles Casilieris, a fact you seem to have forgotten. I do not beg. I do not plead. But I feel certain, princess, that you will do both.”
* * *
He had waited weeks.
Weeks.
Having never been walked out on before—ever—Achilles had first assumed that she would return. Were not virgins forever making emotional connections with the men who divested them of their innocence? That was the reason men of great experience generally avoided virgins whenever possible. Or so he thought, at any rate. The truth was that he could hardly remember anything before Valentina.
Still, he waited. When the royal wedding happened the day after she’d left, and King Geoffrey made his announcement about his lost daughter—who, he’d realized, was his actual assistant and also, it turned out, a royal princess—Achilles had been certain it was only a matter of time before Valentina returned to London.
But she never came.
And he did not know when it had dawned on him that this was something he was going to have to do himself. The very idea enraged him, of course. That she had walked out on him at all was unthinkable. But what he couldn’t seem to get his head around was the fact that she didn’t seem to have seen the error of her ways, no matter how much time he gave her to open her damned eyes.
She was too beautiful and it was worse now, he thought darkly, here in her kingdom, where she was no longer pretending anything.
Tonight she was dressed like the queen she would become one day, all of that copper hair piled high on the top of her head, jewels flashing here and there. Instead of the pencil skirts he’d grown accustomed to, she wore a deep blue gown that clung to her body in a way that was both decorous and alluring at once. And if he was not mistaken, made her curves seem more voluptuous than he recalled.
She was much too beautiful for Achilles’s peace of mind, and worse, she did not break down and begin the begging or the pleading, as he would have preferred. He could see that her eyes were damp, though the tears that had threatened seemed to have receded. She smoothed her hand over her belly, as if the dress had wrinkles when it was very clear that it did not, and when she looked up from that wholly unnecessary task her green eyes were as guarded as her smile was serene.
As if he was a stranger. As if he had never been so deep inside her she’d told him she couldn’t breathe.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“That is the wrong question.”
She didn’t so much as blink, and that smile only deepened. “I had no idea that obscure European charities were of such interest to men of your stature, and I am certain it was not on your schedule.”
“Are you questioning how I managed to score an invite?” he asked, making no particular move to keep the arrogant astonishment from his voice. “Perhaps I must introduce myself again. There is no guest list that is not improved by my presence, princess. Even yours.”
Her gaze became no less guarded. Her expression did not change. But still, Achilles thought something in her steeled. And her shoulders straightened almost imperceptibly.
“I must apologize to you,” she said, very distinctly.
And this was what Achilles had wanted. It was why he’d come here. He had imagined it playing out almost exactly this way.
Except there was something in her tone that rubbed him the wrong way, now that it was happening. It was that guarded look in her eyes perhaps. It was the fact that she didn’t close the distance between them, but stayed where she was, one hand on the balcony railing and the other at her side. As distant as if she was on some magazine cover somewhere instead of standing there in front of him.
He didn’t like this at all.
“You will have to be more specific, I am afraid,” he said coolly. “I can think of a great many apologies you owe me.”
Her mouth curved, though he would not call it a smile, precisely.
“I walked into a bathroom in an airport in London and saw a woman I had never met before, who could only be my twin. I could not resist switching places with her.” Valentina glanced toward the open doors and the gala inside, as if it called to her more than he did, and Achilles hated that, too. Then she looked back at him, and her gaze seemed darker. “Do not mistake me. This is a good life. It is just that it’s a very specific, very planned sort of life and it involves a great many spotlights. I wanted a normal one, for a change. Just for a little while. It never occurred to me that that decision could affect anyone but me. I would never have done it if I ever thought that you—”
But Achilles couldn’t hear this. Because it sounded entirely too much like a postmortem. When he had traveled across Europe to find her because he couldn’t bear the thought that it had already ended, or that he hadn’t picked up on the fact that she was leaving him until she’d already gone.
“Do you need me to tell you that I love you, Valentina?” he demanded, his voice low and furious. “Is that what this is? Tell me what you need to hear. Tell me what it will take.”
She jolted as if he’d slapped her. And he hated that, so he took the single step that closed the distance between them, and then there was no holding himself back. Not when she was so close again—at last—after all these weeks. He reached over and wrapped his hands around her shoulders, holding her there at arm’s length, like some kind of test of his self-control. He thought that showed great restraint, when all he wanted was to haul her toward him and get his mouth on her.
“I don’t need anything,” she threw at him in a harsh sort of whisper. “And I’m sorry you had to find out who I was after I left. I couldn’t figure out how to tell you while I was still with you. I didn’t want to ruin—”
She shook her head, as if distressed.
Achilles laughed. “I knew from almost the first moment you stepped on the plane in Lo
ndon. Did you imagine I would truly believe you were Natalie for long? When you could not perform the most basic of tasks she did daily? I knew who you were within moments after the plane reached its cruising altitude.”
Her green eyes went wide with shock. Her lips parted. Even her face paled.
“You knew?”
“You have never fooled me,” he told her, his voice getting a little too low. A little too hot. “Except perhaps when you claimed you loved me, then left.”
Her eyes overflowed then, sending tears spilling down her perfect, elegant cheeks. And he was such a bastard that some part of him rejoiced.
Because if she cried for him, she wasn’t indifferent to him. She was certainly not immune to him.
It meant that it was possible he hadn’t ruined this, after all, the way he did everything else. It meant it was possible this was salvageable.
He didn’t like to think about what it might mean if it wasn’t.
“Achilles,” she said again, more distinctly this time. “I never saw you coming—it never occurred to me that I could ever be anything but honorable, because I had never been tempted by anything in my life. Only you. The only thing I lied to you about was my name. Everything else was true. Is true.” She shook her head. “But it’s hopeless.”
“Nothing is hopeless,” he growled at her. “I have no intention of losing you. I don’t lose.”
“I’m not talking about a loss,” she whispered fiercely, and he could feel a tremor go through her. “This isn’t a game. You are a man who is used to doing everything in his own way. You are not made for protocol and diplomacy and the tedious necessities of excruciating propriety. That’s not who you are.” Her chin tilted up slightly. “But I’m afraid it is exactly who I am.”
“I’m not a good man, glikia mou,” he told her then, not certain what was gripping him. He only knew he couldn’t let her go. “But you know this. I have always known who I am. A monster in fine clothes, rubbing shoulders with the elites who would spit on me if they could. If they did not need my money and my power.”
The Billionaire's Secret Princess Page 16