Playing Royal: A Vice Agency Novel

by Misti Murphy

  “You belong with me.” He tightens his hold on my arm. “Me. The man.”

  “You’re not just a man,” I whisper.

  “No.” He rests his forehead against mine. “But we can make that work. I’ve watched you swan around as though you were a princess. Don’t think I haven’t paid attention. You’re sweet, and kind, and you behave yourself with decorum.” His lips twitch. “At least most of the time. My people will love you. They’ll see you as I do, mina cauere, my heart.”

  “I’m not what they need. I’m not what you need.” I push away from him, taking halting steps back. If I give in to him I’m going to have nothing. How could I possibly start over when he realizes he doesn’t need or want me anymore? It was hard enough to do when I left home to follow the guy I dated in high school and ended up homeless. I can’t imagine being able to keep my feet under me with a broken heart and no country. “You’ll find someone to be what you need, but it can’t be me.”

  Turning in the doorway, I flee down the stairs, almost slipping on the marble tiles at the bottom as I race for the exit to this heartbreaking fantasy. I hear him call my name, but I keep going. I run until I’m out of breath, until my sight is too blurry from tears and my chest heaves. Why couldn’t I have just been happy with my life exactly the way it was? I was supposed to be, but I don’t think I ever will be again. Bent over, I gasp for air while I fight back the sobs that choke me. I can’t be what he needs, I can’t be. I’m nothing, and he’s the prince of an entire country. Saying yes to what he asked of me would have broken me when he worked out that I didn’t belong with him, that I could never be enough for a man like him.

  I don’t get why he can’t see that. I don’t understand why he would think that I’m worthy of being his princess. All my life people have said they needed me, until I couldn’t give them what they truly wanted, and I couldn’t bear to have Kaiser see me like that. Useless and pathetic and inadequate.

  But the idea of not seeing him again, of having to go back to a life where I’ll only have memories, that breaks me too. How am I ever supposed to find happiness, when the only true happiness I’ve ever known is locked up in him?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Kaiser

  I drop the ring box on the coffee table as Allie bolts from the room. Here I am laying my heart out for her, and she doesn’t want it. She fought me for it, fought to get inside me and for what? I take a deep breath and scrub my hand over my head. Surely she doesn’t mean it. This situation is a lot to take in. I pushed too far too fast, that’s all.

  I chase after her, the front door slamming as I hit the stairs. She didn’t give up on me, I won’t give up on her.

  I call out her name as soon as I’m on the pavement, but she doesn’t turn around. She runs like the hounds of hell are on her trail. Shoulders slumping, I let her leave. It stings to watch her go, the same way it did the first time she walked away from me. I was in love with her then too. I just hadn’t been willing to admit it to myself. But I am now.

  I need to give her time.

  I need to let her get her head wrapped around the facts. Then I’ll convince her she belongs with me.

  “Wilhelm.” The old man Allie met in the elevator strides toward me. He no longer stoops, though he carries the familiar cane with its gold handle, his shoulders drawn back stiffly in his navy suit. He pushes his hand out as he gets to me. “Rothberg Faust.”

  “I know.” I grasp his proffered hand. “Although I didn’t recognize you at first. It’s been a long time.”

  “Too long.” He cocks his head to one side, a quiet sort of friendliness in his gaze. “You were still a lad.”

  “And your hair hadn’t turned white. Plus you didn’t go around pretending you were a decrepit old man to spy on me. Did my father send you?”

  “To spy on you? No. To check on you and make sure you weren’t creating any trouble that would require cleaning up, yes.” He follows me back inside the house. “Many times. But unfortunately that’s not why I’m here.”

  I shoot one last glance in the direction Allie went before shutting the door. After I rid myself of Rothberg I’ll work out what to do about convincing Allie to change her mind.

  “Did the girl heed my advice?” He stands stiffly in the middle of the foyer. “Did she ask you who you were?”

  “She did.” I give a half-shrug.

  “And did you tell her?”

  “Does it matter?” I lead the way into a study, and open a couple windows before drawing a smoke from my pocket. Lighting it, I offer him the flame for his own cigarette.

  He draws the smoke in and exhales it through his nose. “I suppose not. I just thought she might have been…” He waves away the rest of what he was thinking along with the wafting smoke.

  I inhale deeply, hold it for a second as I mull over my words. “I need more time.”

  He moves to stare at a painting that Leopold did. “Unfortunately, you don’t have it.” His shoulders sag. “Your father had a stroke last night. Another this morning. The doctors don’t think he’ll make it, and if he does, he won’t be fit to continue as king. You’re needed now, Wilhelm.”

  “Shit.” I slump into a chair, my chest heavy. The last time I saw my father was the day I put Karovka behind me. He’d been making it clear that Leo’s duties were mine now, and although I knew it to be true, we’d only just laid my brother to rest. The grief was too fresh, grief that swells in me now, thinking about that afternoon in the throne room.

  He’d been harsher than I’d ever seen him, clinical, and I couldn’t deal with the fact he didn’t seem to suffer over Leo. He had been intent only on making sure I understood my place. We’d shouted at each other for a time, before I’d walked away from him. My last parting words to my father had been to the King, not the man.

  “I’ll fulfill my duties, my obligations to take the throne, but I will never set foot in Karovka as long as you’re king.”

  I’d told him point blank to his face that I wouldn’t return until he was dead, even if the words I used weren’t exact.

  I may never see my father again. Guilt swells in my chest. I’ve avoided him for so long, and now I might not even get the chance to say goodbye. I suck on my cigarette, inhale the smoke, but it does nothing to change the fact that my world has been rocked to its core. Even if I don’t get to see my father again, I have to go. And how am I supposed to convince Allie that she’s wrong about me when I’m halfway across the world?

  “We’ve a private charter ready and waiting at the airport. We need to leave. Now.” Rothbert butts out his cigarette in the ashtray on the desk. “How quickly can you get what you need?”

  What I need is Allie. I need to find her and convince her to come with me. Even if she needs more time to think through what I told her, leaving her behind kills me. All I want is to hold onto her while I try to process what’s happening with my father, and the responsibilities I must finally shoulder. But I have no idea where she ran to, and her phone goes straight to voicemail. “Damn it, Allie.”

  “We don’t have time for your lover’s tiff.” Rothbert says, stiffly. “Not if you want to see your father.”

  I know he’s right. I don’t have a choice but to leave her behind. Even if I knew where Allie is right now, I doubt I could persuade her to come with me. There’s just not enough time, though I wish there was. I have to put my father first, I have to go home, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to change that right now. No matter how desperate I am to find her. “I need a couple minutes.” I slowly rise to my feet, grinding my butt in the ashtray. “I just need to gather a few things from upstairs.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Allie

  Always yours, Allie.

  I scrawl the last words onto the page and set the pen down. It’s been six months, three weeks and two days since I made the biggest mistake of my life. It hadn’t taken me long to realize what a fool I was being, either, just ample time for it to be impossible to change.

&n
bsp; I’d thought he was confused about what he wanted from me. I’d thought he’d realize that love and need were two different things. That when he said he needed me, he only thought he did, and that he’d realize I could never be enough. That eventually I would be the one who had to pay the price of his misplaced desire for me. But I’d been the one who was confused, because I’d never realized that need didn’t mean he wanted something from me. Only that he wanted me, the same way I came to find I needed him.

  Slowly I fold the paper into a square, and again before adding it to the envelope along with the others. I started writing the letters about a week after I ran out on Kaiser’s proposal, once I realized he was never going to answer his phone, or his door because he was no longer here. I’d even tried Vice, but Loz explained they had no idea where he’d vanished to, and I didn’t feel right sharing his secrets.

  I planned to send the first one, but a letter won’t cut it when it comes to explaining how stupid I’ve been, how profoundly sorry I am, and how much I’ve fallen for him. And besides, sending it to some palace in some far away country, how could I even be sure he would get it?

  Tossing the envelope into my bag, I lock up my apartment and race for the train. I’ve got an extra shift at The Palace. I’ve been working a lot of them. I’m almost at my goal. I bought a ticket to Karovka, but I still need a little more for accommodations and other necessities. I don’t know if or even how to get an audience with a king, or whether he’ll want to see me, but I’m going to try. I have to. He deserves to know why I made the worst decision of my life. Even if all I get to do is see him one last time and explain why I ran away, it’ll be worth the trip.

  I nab a seat and pop in my ear buds, pulling up the Karovka news. I don’t understand the language, but sometimes they speak English, and sometimes I catch his face and hear his voice for a few moments. It makes my heart bleed, but I crave these glimpses of him. I watched his coronation. My prince, shouldering his responsibilities and becoming king. I’d smiled though I hadn’t been able to watch the whole thing, my eyes watering so much the picture was blurry. He didn’t need me in the end.

  I don’t think he ever did. And that makes it worse. Because it means he truly cared for me, and I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t even recognize it, because no one had ever cared about me like that before.

  When the news is finished I wind up my headset and put my phone away.

  I’d messaged my stepmother and asked her why she’d never been able to stand me. What was it about me that made me so unlovable? She’d said it was because my father had loved me so much more than her. But now I was nothing and he would be ashamed of me, and that was something that she could hold onto. I’d deleted her text messages and her number from my phone. I’d erased her from my life.

  Her feelings no longer bother me, except all these years she taught me to believe that people didn’t love without needing something in return. So when the real deal was staring me in the face I thought it was fantasy. I assumed it could never be real. Not for me.

  The train pulls in to the station, and I make a mad dash through the rain to the bar. It’s busy already tonight, the hum of constant chatter punctuated with moments of laughter or arguments. Liam smiles as I skirt the bar. “Glad you’re here, Allie Cat.”

  He actually tried to get me to go out with him a couple times. I agreed once, to go to a baseball game in the hopes it might help me move on, but I can’t. He gets that, and we’ve fallen into a rough camaraderie. He’s the first friend I’ve had in so very long. Once I realized I was wrong about Kaiser, it got easier to let my guard down in other ways too.

  I plaster a smile on my face as I start serving drinks. The lines are three and four people deep tonight, and I shove away thoughts of him while I work, or at least as much as I can.

  When it hits midnight I know without glancing at a clock. Somehow, even after six months, I still intuitively sense the time. The crowd at the bar has petered out to one or two at a time, and Liam has it under control so I turn my back on the bar and take a deep breath. My fingers brush over the label on the Macallan. Three more weeks, and my biggest fantasy might come true. I might, somehow, if I’m lucky, get to see my Kai again. God, I hope so.

  “Three fingers, Macallan, beautiful.”

  I’d know that voice anywhere. Heard it a thousand times in my dreams. It sends a jolt up my spine, and my whole body starts to tremble. I lift the bottle from the shelf, but I’m shaking so hard it slips from my fingers and smashes. Through my stinging eyes, I barely see the splatter of glass and whisky that coats my boots.

  His hand comes across the bar, grasping my shoulder and turning me around. “Princess, don’t you think it’s time you came out from behind your walls?”

  “Kai.” I gulp. He’s standing right in front of me. Flesh and bone. Real. His green eyes drinking me in as though nothing has changed. “I mean—”

  He puts a finger to his lips. “Just Kai. Now, why don’t you come around to this side of the bar? Or I’ll be forced to come get you.”

  I blink slowly, clearing the tears that still make my vision watery. I so desperately want this to not be a dream. When the picture doesn’t change, when he’s still standing there waiting for me my pulse jack rabbits. I slip around the bar as quick as my feet will carry me. “What are you doing here?”

  “After you ran away from me, I kind of got it. I mean it was a lot to take in, and I thought I’d give you time to get used to the idea of what being with me would be like. But then my father had a stroke and I didn’t have time.”

  “Oh.” I pad closer, as close as I dare. The heat of him warms me, and I want to reach out and touch his chest. “That’s why you disappeared so suddenly.”

  “Yes.” He runs his fingers down my arm.

  “Is your father okay?” I don’t recall seeing a royal funeral or any mention of it on the Karovka news, but maybe I missed it, maybe I didn’t understand what I was seeing.

  “He passed away.” Exhaustion and sadness tinges his voice.

  My heart hurts for how much he has lost. First his brother, and now his father. And I let him down. I should have been with him, should have been there for him.

  “And there have been a lot of things I’ve had to deal with these past six months, which is why I haven’t been back. But that doesn’t mean you haven’t been on my mind. It doesn’t mean I didn’t plan to come here and change your mind the first chance I got.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper, shaking my head. How did I ever consider not being with him even for a moment?

  His gaze clouds, his brow furrowing. “Is there someone else? Tell me if there is, because I’m not going to give up on this. You owned my heart from the first time you smiled at me.”

  Stepping closer, I put my finger to his lips. “No. No one else, nothing else. I’m sorry I wasn’t smart enough to realize that this was true love. I’m sorry I ran from you because I didn’t know better. I’m sorry I’ve wasted so much time when I could have been with you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.” I slip onto my toes as I press my mouth to his. “I was an idiot, and I’m sorry. I was saving to go to Karovka to try and tell you that. To tell you if you still wanted me that nothing else mattered. That you’re everything to me, and I’d give up anything you asked of me to be with you.”

  “You were coming to Karovka? When?”

  “Three weeks. I bought my plane ticket. My suitcase is packed.”

  His arms go around me like steel bands, holding me to him as his face breaks into a grin. “My beautiful Allie, my princess, my queen. Are you telling me you’ll marry me?”

  “If you’ll have me still.” I feel buoyant, my belly full of butterflies, my heart light for the first time in years, maybe even as far back as when my dad died. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this buoyant and giddy.

  “Always.” He clasps my face in his hands and growls in his throat before slamming his mouth to mine. He kisses me like he’s starved for me, and I revel in
it. I soak up his need for me, his desire, and return it.

  Epilogue

  Allie

  It’s been four months since I left my life behind to move to a country I knew sweet little about for the man I love. And I haven’t regretted it for a moment. The media are calling it a whirlwind affair, a fairy tale romance.

  I turn for Gail who hovers beside the platform I’m standing on. “This is some dress.”

  “Fit for a queen.” She smiles as she fluffs the material, skimming her hand over the pearlescent white fabric of the full skirt and train. “You look amazing.”

  I look like a princess, yards and yards and yards of tulle and lace surrounding me. Another fabulous creation of hers. She’d been the only person I wanted to design my wedding dress. It was only fitting my pseudo fairy godmother should be the one to dress me for the big occasion. Besides we became friends after our time together while I thought my relationship with Kai was sheer fantasy. “Because of you.”

  “Because you’re happy.” She holds out long white gloves for me to put on. “Radiant.”

  I pat my stomach, and smile indulgently at the thought of the non-existent baby bump that won’t show for months yet. He or she will be heir to the throne, but more than that, they will be loved. They will know love and understand that no matter who they are or who they want to be they will always be someone.

  The door opens and Kai lets out a low whistle. “Beautiful.”

  “You shouldn’t be in here.” Gail scowls at him. “Bad luck and all that.”

  “King.” He points his thumb at his chest as he prowls toward me. “And I don’t think we need luck, do we, Allie?”

  “We have each other.” I step to the edge of the platform.

  “No.” He puts his palm up, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “You stay right where you are. Gail, get out.”