by Mari Carr
“Father is here.”
As if that explained everything. And it did. “I cannot be his princess right now.” Sophia flung her head back to look at the ceiling and sighed. “Brother, please, take him away.”
Antonio cupped her arms with his hands. “He is not here to see you.”
Sophia’s head snapped down. Antonio didn’t speak, but the corners of his eyes were pinched with worry, and his dark brows were drawn together over his nose.
She whirled to look at James, who was eyeing the knights as if deciding who he’d take out first.
“We have to go to Tristan!”
James’s attention snapped to her, and when she took off running, blowing past her brother and Vico, James was right behind her. She heard the whoosh of expelled air as either Antonio or Vico failed to get out of James’s way.
Together they sprinted down the short hall. The security officers stationed on the walls all came to attention at the sight of people running. They started shouting in a variety of languages. Sophia made a hard left at the end of the hall, glad for her rubber-soled shoes, and nearly collided with the Roman security officer who stood squarely in front of Tristan’s door.
“Let me pass!” she snapped in Italian.
“I’m sorry, Princess, but I cannot allow you—”
James tackled him, his shoulder driving into the other man’s midsection. The doorway abruptly cleared as James and the security officer sailed off.
The security officer hit the floor and slid ten feet on the smooth, polished hospital tile. James caught himself, stumbling a little, one hand on the wall.
Sophia grabbed his arm and tugged him to the door. He was grimacing, and she knew his knee had to be hurting, but their husband needed them.
She thrust open the door, then whipped aside the curtain that shielded the bed from the open doorway.
Another security officer stood in the corner. He pulled a Taser gun from a holster and raised it. James thrust Sophia behind him.
“Don’t touch them!” Tristan snarled. At the same time, Giovanni said, “No, Milo.”
Milo, Antonio’s second-in-command, holstered the stun gun. Sophia slipped around James’s side, keeping one hand on him. She could feel the anger pulsing through him.
“Tristan.” She ignored her father. “Are you well?”
“Am I well?” Tristan glanced at his right arm and then away.
That hadn’t been the right thing to say. Sophia stared helplessly at her husband, wishing she’d had more time to talk to Dr. Kapoor.
“Father.” She whirled on him. “What are you doing here?”
Her father was frowning at her jeans, T-shirt, and jacket. “Sophia—”
“Why, Father?” she demanded harshly.
The admiral of Rome’s eyebrows rose. She’d hadn’t spoken to him like that since she’d been a teenager.
“I am not here to speak with you, Sophia. I have come to give the announcements from the conclave.”
“You had it? Where?” Tristan asked. His voice sounded more normal than it had since before he was hurt.
“In a place you will know about, but which I cannot say in front of them.”
To Sophia’s shock, her father gestured at her when he said “them.”
What was going on?
James squeezed her hand, and Sophia looked up, reading the confusion in his gaze. She shook her head once, telling him that she didn’t understand.
“Tristan Knight,” Giovanni said, his tone formal. “You are, by order of the conclave, relieved of your knighthood.”
“No,” Sophia breathed. She started to take a step forward, wanting to at least lay a hand on Tristan’s foot under the covers. Her father shot her a look and she froze.
He was, after all, not only her father, but her Ammiraglio.
“I understand,” Tristan said quietly. “I am no longer fit to be a knight.”
Sophia opened her mouth to argue. Losing his right hand did not mean he couldn’t be a knight. He could hold his sword with his other hand. He could use a gun instead. To say that the loss of one arm meant he was not worthy to be a knight was barbaric. Being a knight was about more than holding a sword.
“Arthur Billings,” Giovanni intoned.
Almost as one, Tristan, Sophia, and James looked at Giovanni in shock. He knew Tristan’s real name?
“You are, by order of the conclave of admirals, appointed admiral of England.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I can’t be the admiral.” Tristan stared at Giovanni in shock.
The admiral of Rome stood beside Tristan’s hospital bed, dressed in an elegant pale gray suit, his dark hair and eyes so much like his daughter’s.
Tristan shifted his gaze to James and Sophia, who were at the foot of the bed. James was staring at Giovanni with wide eyes. Sophia’s eyes were narrowed as she glared at her father. She must have felt him looking at her because she shifted her gaze, and then reached out to lay a hand on his ankle.
“You are refusing?” Giovanni asked.
“I can’t be the admiral,” Tristan repeated. Maybe this was a dream. That would make more sense—he was having some morphine-fueled, hyper-realistic dream.
“Of course you can. With my daughter as your spouse, you will make an excellent admiral.”
Tristan shook his head.
“You are refusing?” Giovanni asked again.
“Of course not.” Sophia squeezed his ankle. James came to the side of the bed, standing directly opposite Giovanni. He braced his feet shoulder-width apart and crossed his arms. He looked ready to do some serious damage.
The knight in the corner’s shoes squeaked as he shifted position in response to James’s movement.
Tristan looked around. It was like high noon in an old western, everyone strategically positioned so they could see the other players.
“You cannot do this to him,” Sophia told her father. “Not right now.”
“It has to be now.”
“He’s recovering from being shot. From…”
Sophia didn’t finish the sentence, so Tristan did it for her. “From having my arm cut off.”
The door to the room opened and Antonio slipped in. He glared at James, who only raised his brows.
Ha, he’s actually your new brother-in-law!
The knight in the corner nodded to Sophia’s brother, a sign of respect, then resumed watching the drama playing out around the bed.
Sophia looked at her sibling. “Antonio, tell him this is madness.”
“No, I will not.”
Sophia looked ready to kill her brother.
Antonio shrugged. “I heard what happened in that room. It is not madness that Tristan be made admiral. Security teams from all the territories swept that room. No one but Tristan noticed the irregularity in the ceiling. If he hadn’t acted when he did, the gunman would have been able to kill every admiral in the room before anyone could react.”
“No.” Tristan ground the word out. He wasn’t going to let them make him a hero when he wasn’t. “It was only after I stood on the table that the shooting started.” That fact was haunting him.
“Because they realized they’d been discovered,” Antonio insisted. “If they’d had more time to set the shots and program the computer, they could have killed more people.”
“Computer?” James asked.
“The gun they recovered was a programmable sniper rifle. The shooter would have used the heat sensor to help him aim, and then lock the gun’s exact position for each individual shot into a connected computer.”
Antonio paused, sweeping a look over each of them. “If the shooter had more time, he could have pinpointed the position of each admiral, programmed it, and set the rifle to fire automatically. It would have taken less than five seconds for the gun to reposition between shots. In forty-five seconds, every admiral would have been dead.”
Tristan stared at Antonio in dawning horror.
“My God,” James whispered.
Sophia squeezed his foot and bowed her head. No one spoke until Giovanni cleared his throat.
“Arthur Billings, I will ask you one final time. Do you refuse to become the admiral of England?”
This was really happening. That was the part he was having trouble believing. A lot of unbelievable things had happened recently, and this was just one more.
Tristan took a deep breath. “If I refuse, I’ll be kicked out of the Masters’ Admiralty.”
“Yes. And you know what that means?”
Members who disobeyed their admiral, or who were ejected from the society for violating any of their laws, could expect, at best, to be bankrupted, imprisoned, and cut off from everyone they ever knew, not to mention losing their trinity. Many were executed, if their offenses were serious enough. Tristan had never been forced to carry through on an execution, but he’d come close once, when a young member had used his power and connections to kidnap, rape, and torture three women. Winston had decided to let British justice take care of him, though the families of the young women—all of whom had been young legacies—had howled for the man’s head to roll.
“I am a knight. I know.”
“What is your answer?”
Tristan looked at James, then at Sophia. He meant what he’d said. He would have loved them. Protected them.
“I refuse.”
“No!” Sophia gasped.
“What are you doing?” James demanded.
Giovanni’s eyes glittered with anger. “You are weak. I had thought better of you.”
Tristan clenched his left hand into a fist. The muscles in his right upper arm also flexed, trying to move fingers that were no longer there. “I am not weak. Do not insult me to make yourself feel better.”
Giovanni frowned.
“I will give my life to protect the Masters’ Admiralty.” Tristan took a deep breath. “And to protect my trinity.”
“Protect us?” James bent over the bed. “Protect us from what? Don’t do this. They’ll kill you if you refuse!”
What would it have been like to have a man like James as a husband? He would never know. But he could do this one last thing for them.
“I am doing it to protect you from me,” Tristan told him quietly.
Antonio stepped closer to the bed. “You think the Domino will come after you?”
Now it was Tristan’s turn to frown. This conversation was not going the way he’d expected. “I didn’t mean that.”
“What did you mean?” Antonio asked.
“I’m protecting them from this.” Tristan used his left hand to gesture at his right side. “I can’t be what they deserve.”
In a way, this was a relief. Tristan had always felt a bit like a fraud. Some part of him had always been waiting for someone to point at him and ask who he was, or what he was doing in a society as powerful and well connected as the Masters’ Admiralty.
“Tristan—”
He cut James off. “I’m not Tristan anymore.”
“Fine, Arthur, whatever you want to be called. You’re committing suicide because you lost your hand?”
“I’m not committing suicide. I’m taking care of you. I’m making sure you two will be safe and happy. With me gone, you can move to Rome with Sophia. Find a third who’s worthy of you.”
Sophia’s face was a white mask, save for two spots of color high on her cheeks. She started to round the foot of the bed.
Antonio lunged, yanking her off her feet and pulling her back.
“Release her,” Tristan barked, starting to rise off the pillow.
Sophia was pounding on her brother’s forearm with both fists.
“She was going to slap you,” Antonio protested.
James started toward Antonio, every inch of his body radiating threat. “Take your hands off our wife. She wasn’t going to slap him. For God’s sake, he’s in a hospital bed.”
Antonio released his sister, holding his hands up, but his expression was anything but contrite.
Sophia blew past James. “Oh, yes. I am going to slap his stupid face!”
Tristan dropped his head back onto the pillow and manfully suppressed a yelp. There was something uniquely terrifying about an enraged woman coming at him.
“I told you so.” Antonio was smirking.
James grabbed her. “Calm down, Sophia.”
“Did you hear him?” Her voice vibrated with rage as James hauled her back against his chest. “He is going to kill himself—to what? To protect us?” She glared at Tristan. “You arrogant, conceited fool. If I want you dead, I will kill you. You don’t kill you. I kill you.” By the end of the tirade, Sophia’s English grammar was failing, and her voice was thick with tears.
Tristan could only blink in shock at her response. He’d expected maybe a few tears, a hug or a kiss, and then for his noble falling-on-his-proverbial-sword to be honored, and for his husband and wife to remember him fondly as they went on to live rich, happy lives with some other man as their third. A man with an impeccable pedigree and two hands.
His gaze met Sophia’s and it was like a physical blow. Though her lips were twisted in anger, her face set in a snarl, there was pain in her eyes. Pain and fear and desperation.
He’d caused that.
He was a bloody fucking wanker.
He’d been in the hospital for two days, and every time he’d opened his eyes, they’d been there. If not for the fact that they were wearing different shirts, he would have sworn they hadn’t even left the room. Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they’d changed and showered in the tiny bathroom while he slept.
They hadn’t been married a full week, and as the doctor he’d been talking to had pointed out before Giovanni made his entrance, he’d gone through a lot in the past week. It was as if he were a boat lost at sea, with no stars to guide him home. He was so lost that he was willing and ready to just let the waves take him, to fall down into the deep, cold darkness.
But he wasn’t alone in the sea. Sophia and James were there with him. They could guide him home.
Right now, Tristan didn’t feel certain about much of anything, up to and including what his name actually was, but there was one thing he was certain of.
He could love them. Given time and a chance, he would love them more than any man had ever loved his trinity.
And there, in the pain and fear hiding in Sophia’s eyes, was that same certainty—that if he gave her the chance, she would love him.
Sophia looked away, and then stopped fighting James’s hold. She turned in his arms, pressing her face into the other man’s chest. Tristan looked up at James. The other man’s eyes were shadowed by fatigue, and there was anger and hurt in the lines on his face.
They were his.
“Sophia, James.” Tristan struggled to sit up. His whole right side was a dull throb.
“No. I won’t listen to this anymore.” Sophia’s back was to him, but he saw her swipe at her face, brushing away tears.
James glared down at him and then opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something, but he merely shook his head.
“I want to leave,” Sophia whispered to James.
“Sure.” He rubbed her arm, and then he too turned away from Tristan.
Tristan grabbed for the bed control and pushed the button to raise the head. It wasn’t as dignified as he’d wanted, but crippled beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Sophia, James, stop. Wait.”
Sophia whirled, clinging to James’s arm as she glared at him. “You have no right to speak to us.”
Tristan exhaled, then drew in a clean, calm breath.
“I have every right. I’m your admiral.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The newly anointed admiral of England stared down at his cell phone. He’d had it in the pocket of his pants the day of the conclave, and somehow it had survived the rush to the hospital. It wasn’t until James had set it down in front of him that he even thought about the little device.
“Arthu
r?” Sophia asked. She was speaking to him again, which was good. After the rather dramatic scene yesterday, Arthur had wanted to talk to her and James, but his arm had started to hurt to the point he couldn’t ignore it. He’d been given additional pain medication and warned not to move around so much without help. He’d slept, partially because of the drugs, partially from exhaustion, until eight a.m. this morning. The nurses had been planning to give him a sponge bath, and though Sophia and James both offered to help, he’d begged them to let him keep some of his dignity. They’d agreed, and had just returned from breakfast.
He looked up from the phone. “Who knows?”
“What do you mean?” She perched gingerly on the edge of his bed.
“I mean, who else knows I’m the admiral?”
“I could answer that, if this were a normal situation.” Sophia touched his knee. “But it is not, so I’m not sure how it is being handled.”
Tristan—damn it, he still sometimes thought of himself as Tristan—sighed. “No, it’s not normal.”
“Because you were in the hospital, my father, in his role as messenger from the conclave, might have contacted your vice admiral or your finance minister.”
“I need to call them.” Tristan—no, Arthur, from now on, he was Arthur—turned the phone over in his hand. “Lorelei, the vice admiral, has been my boss since I was a squire.” He set the phone down on the table and went to run his hands through his hair.
But there was only one hand. His right arm was strapped to his chest in a complicated sling. The good news was that while he was wearing it, he was allowed to get out of bed and walk to the bathroom all by himself. The bad news was, walking and moving were difficult.
“Do you…do you need help dialing?” she asked.
“No,” Arthur ground out.
He was going to need help. He couldn’t snap at people every time they offered.
But damn it, he could still do this. He snatched up the phone, held down the button, and used the voice command. “Call Lorelei.” He set it to speaker and placed the phone on the table.
The phone rang twice before she answered. “Admiral.”