by Holly Hart
Maria looks as if I’m speaking Chinese to her.
“I meant the staff,” she says. “They’ll need somewhere to stay.”
“Staff? What are you talking about?”
“The royal family travels with secretaries, valets, drivers, security. A dozen in all, at least.”
This is insane. Why on earth would we need a dozen people to fly somewhere for a visit?
“Okay,” I say, putting up my hands. “We need to talk about this stuff. I really don’t think – ”
At that moment, Carlo appears in the doorway of our chambers, agitated and huffing from exertion. I’ve never seen him any less than fully composed. What in the world is going on?
“Carlo, are you all right?” I ask, rising to take him by the arm and lead him to the sofa.
“I’m afraid not, Your Highness,” he pants. “I ran here from my office – neither of you were answering your phones.”
“We have them muted. What’s the emergency?” My stomach suddenly drops. “Is it the children? Dante? Has something happened?”
He runs a big hand through his hair. Seeing him in a state like this has goosebumps rising on my arms.
“Something has indeed happened,” he says. “But not what you think. Maria, please turn the television to 4Roma.”
She snaps up the remote and turns on the TV. After a few clicks, we’re looking at something on the screen that stops my heart cold.
It’s a still photo of a blonde with her face digitally blurred, lying in a bed, holding a camera in a selfie pose. She’s naked, her body blurred like her face.
Next to her in the bed is Dante, asleep, his arm under her head.
Maria looks at me, eyes wide. My shock must show on my face because she rushes to my side and wraps an arm around my shoulder.
“Steady,” she says. “Don’t panic. I’m sure this isn’t what it appears to be.”
“They’re saying the photos are from the prince’s bachelor party in Ibiza,” says Carlo. “I’ve been trying to track down Emilio to talk about this, but he’s nowhere to be found.”
On the TV, Lorenzo Ricci sits behind the anchor desk with a scowl. The photo of Dante and the woman shrinks to the screen behind him.
“For those just joining us, you’re looking at photos from Prince Dante’s bachelor party less than three weeks ago,” he says sternly. “Yes, you heard that right. The prince in bed with a woman who is most definitely not Amanda Sparks, just days before their so-called storybook wedding.”
My mouth is dry. I feel like I’ve been cruising down the highway at sixty miles an hour and accidentally shifted from fifth gear to reverse.
“We received these photos from an impeccable source and have independently confirmed that they are real and were taken the night of the twenty-sixth,” says Ricci. “The revelation comes as no shock to this reporter. I have said for years that Dante is not the man to lead the Morovan monarchy, and this simply adds to the mounting pile of evidence.
“It is absolutely clear that the royal marriage is simply hasty window dressing to keep the councils from taking direct control of the Trentini fortune for the good of the nation.”
Maria shakes a fist at the screen.
“Bastardo!” she barks. “He calls himself a journalist! He’s nothing but a rumor monger!”
“I don’t know,” I say through numb lips. “Looks pretty authentic to me.”
“Your Highness,” Carlo says, taking me by the shoulders. “I’ve known the prince his entire life. I don’t pretend to understand the circumstances of these photos, but I can say one thing with utter certainty: I’ve never seen him as happy as he’s been since you arrived at the palace.”
“Carlo is right,” says Maria, taking my hand. “Dante is a new man.”
I don’t know what to think. Carlo and Maria are my friends, but they’re also on Dante’s payroll. They claim to know him, but neither of them is disputing that the photos show him in the arms of another woman.
And do I have the right to be outraged? Or even surprised? Our marriage was laid out in black and white as a contract. Nowhere did it say that Dante had to be faithful to me.
My guts are twisting inside me. Was I blinded by naïve hope? I was a convenient virgin who happened to be in the right place at the right time – no one said I was anything more than that.
Except Dante told me he loved me. Why would he do that if he didn’t really feel that way?
“I can’t watch this anymore,” I say, wiping tears away with my palm. “I need to be alone. Leave, please.”
Maria and Carlo exchange a nervous glance.
“Please don’t worry, ma’am,” says Carlo. “I’ll be sure to send Dante here as soon as we manage to get in touch with him. There must be an explanation.”
“Fine,” I say absently, showing them the door. “I’ll wait for him here.”
They look at me uncomfortably as they file past. I close the door behind them and drop to the sofa.
Great, racking sobs shake my body to the core as I see my whole world falling apart.
Chapter Forty-Nine
48. DANTE
This can’t be happening. It can’t.
Maria’s glare is unmistakable as she clicks off the screen in her office.
“I’m trying very hard not to jump to conclusions,” she says, eyebrow arched. “So please tell me what’s going on here.”
“Has Amanda seen this?” I ask, panic creeping into my guts.
“Yes,” she says. “You could have watched it together, but no one could get in touch with you.”
God damn it. I turned my phone off while I was in the gym – when I came out, there were a dozen urgent messages from Maria and Carlo.
“She must be beside herself,” I say. “I have to talk to her.”
Maria holds up a hand to stop me.
“Talk to me first,” she says. “Tell me what’s happening in those photos.”
“I don’t know!” I shout. “We were drinking, I went to bed, and I woke up with a terrible hangover that lasted for days.”
Her face slumps. “So it could be real,” she says. “You were too drunk to remember.”
Bile rises in my throat at the accusation.
“You know me, Maria,” I say. “I wouldn’t do something like this, that would hurt Amanda. I’m not like that.”
“Your playboy image may have been exaggerated by Renaldo’s crew, but it’s still based in reality. Are you telling me that you’ve never woken up with a woman in your bed before? One that ended up there in the course of a night of drinking?”
My stomach sinks. I can’t honestly say that. I’ve done my share of partying, slept with more than my share of women. Giselle Ranette was one of many, many mistakes I’ve made in my life.
But none since Amanda walked into my life. Those eyes caught me like a fishing hook the moment we met, and they’ve held me fast ever since.
“I’m not going to justify my past to you, Maria,” I say, more angrily than I intended. “I don’t know what’s going on in these photos, but whatever it is, I know I wasn’t consciously aware of it.”
She rolls her eyes. “That will go over well with Lorenzo Ricci, I’m sure. ‘I wasn’t aware.’ How many sleazy politicians have we heard that from over the decades?”
“Look,” I snap. “I recognize the woman from earlier in the party. I said something… unflattering to her and a friend of hers at the party. Maybe this is some kind of revenge for her. With the hangover I suffered, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d put a date rape drug in my drink.”
“Destroying a prince over an insult?” she says. “Really, Dante?”
“I don’t know!” I bark, striding to the door. “All I do know is I need to talk to Amanda.”
“I don’t think she’s in the mood,” Maria says. “As you can probably imagine.”
I storm out of her office and stalk towards the quarters I share with Amanda. She has to listen to me! We can’t have made it this far to have i
t fall apart now over something so stupid! I need her to listen.
My stomach is roiling with acid. I don’t know if I’ve ever been this upset as an adult, outside of learning of the deaths of Adriana and Albert, and discovering I was now the twins’ guardian. My life has been defined by tragedy, and the moment I find a glimmer of hope for happiness, this comes out of nowhere to blindside me.
I reach our quarters and gingerly open the door. Amanda is sitting on the sofa, hands folded in her lap, staring at the wall.
“Amanda?” I say softly. “May I come in?”
“It’s your palace,” she shrugs, not looking at me. “You can do what you want.”
I close the door behind me. “It’s our palace,” I say. “Yours and mine.”
“I don’t remember reading anything about that in the contract. It specifically said five million dollars for a year of marriage.”
The muscles in my neck and shoulders are stiff with tension as I sit next to her. This is a nightmare.
“It’s a mistake,” I say. “I don’t know what happened with that woman, but whatever it was, I wasn’t conscious when it was going on.”
That didn’t sound at all the way I wanted it to.
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” she says quietly. “All you owed me was enough money to help save my family ranch from foreclosure. You’ve fulfilled that part of the bargain, I’m going to fulfill mine.”
I reach out to take her hand, but she pulls away. She still hasn’t looked me in the eye.
“The night those photos were taken,” she says. “That was the same night you told my father that the ‘bride price’ was twenty-five million, not five million.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you do that?”
I frown. “Because I didn’t believe five million dollars was enough to compensate you for what you would have to go through as my wife.”
“I never thought I’d have to go through something like this,” she says. It hits me like an arrow in the chest.
“Amanda – ”
“Tell me one thing,” she says. “Did you do it to make sure I wouldn’t talk? Is that why you upped the money? Because you knew what you’d be doing later in the evening?”
I reach out and take her by the shoulders, turning her to face me.
“Absolutely not,” I say gravely. “I did it for you. And because your father deserved it. He’s the most honorable man I know.”
“I doubt he feels the same way about you today. The story will be all over the morning news in Montana by now.”
Jesus, I never even thought of that. And the twins! This mess is snowballing out of control.
“Amanda, I swear to you: those photos are staged. Someone is trying to hurt me.”
“Who?” she asks. “What motive would they have?”
“The councils want me out! For all I know, Huber planted that woman at the party specifically to blackmail me.”
She sighs and looks down at her hands for a long time. The thought that anything I’ve done has made her feel this way makes my soul crack. I have to make it right. If I don’t, I fear I may go insane.
“I wasn’t there, and you can’t prove anything about that night, one way or the other,” she says. “My father raised me to take people at their word. I won’t ask you any more about it.”
That’s a far cry from saying she believes me and that she’ll stand beside me through this. But she’s right – I don’t have any evidence about anything that night. I have to make her understand that I’d never deliberately do anything to hurt her.
She raises those ghostly blue eyes to mine, and the sadness I see in them almost destroys me.
“What are you going to tell the children?” she asks.
“The truth: that someone is trying to blackmail me.”
“Do you think they’ll understand that?”
“I hope so. I need to talk to your father, too. He was there, I’m sure he’ll believe me.”
She bites her lip. “That’ll be cold comfort when he has to explain it to his buddies at the cattle auction.”
“That’s not up to him,” I say. “It’s up to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m going on Morova Morning tomorrow to talk directly to Lorenzo Ricci This is a deliberate attack against us, and I’m not going to take it lying down.”
Chapter Fifty
49. AMANDA
“Ricci’s grin is so smug I just want to slap it right off his face,” I say as the show begins.
Maria, Carlo, Isabella and I are in Maria’s office to watch the broadcast. It didn’t take much to convince the show’s producers to run a live interview with Dante this morning. Now I have every finger and toe crossed that he can resolve this mess.
Somehow, though, I doubt it.
“Renaldo coached Dante about how to approach the interview,” Maria says from her desk. “He’s the best in the business. I’m sure Dante is ready for Ricci.”
I’m still in turmoil over this whole thing. The twins took the news fairly well, all things considered. I guess they’re used to seeing their uncle’s face in the headlines and having less-than-flattering things said about him.
We put up a good front for them, acting like nothing had changed between us. Nothing could be further from the truth, but I won’t let them see that.
“Dante has the moral high ground,” says Isabella, sipping her cappuccino. “I’m sure he has nothing to worry about. Assuming he’s telling us the truth, of course.”
Sometimes I wish she would get a permanent case of laryngitis. But she’s not wrong. I wish with everything in me that I could trust Dante. And for the sake of the kids, I have to at least act like I do. I have to do everything in my power to keep them from being hurt by any of this.
But deep down – I just don’t know.
The show comes back from the morning news anchor and the camera lands on Ricci.
“Welcome back,” he says through the screen. “Our guest this morning needs no introduction, of course. Prince Dante Trentini has been the monarch of our great nation for the past nine years, ever since taking the mantle at the age of twenty-one, following the deaths of both his parents and his sister, Princess Adriana, and her husband Albert, Duke of Stresa. He is also the guardian of Adriana and Albert’s twin children.”
He turns to face Dante. “Your Highness,” he says. “Good morning.”
Dante nods. “Lorenzo.”
“He looks angry,” I say, alarmed. “Should he be doing that?”
“It’s Renaldo’s idea,” says Carlo. “He said the prince shouldn’t try to put on an act this time. His genuine anger and outrage should be on display in order to get the Morovan people on his side. It’s risky, in my opinion, but it’s the path the prince has chosen.”
Ricci continues the interview.
“You’ve asked to be here to tell your side of the story,” he says. “And in the interests of journalistic fairness, here you are.”
“It’s interesting that you use the word ‘fairness,’” Dante says. His voice is ice. I’ve never seen him like this before.
“Why do you say that, sir?”
“No one on your staff bothered to get in touch with the palace to discuss these allegations before you went live with them yesterday.”
“You’re saying you would have denied your involvement with the woman in the photos during your bachelor party?” he asks. It’s more a statement than a question.
Dante’s lips curls.
“I would have told you the truth: I have no memory of anyone taking those photos, which means someone slipped a drug into my drink that night and set up the photos to blackmail me.”
Ricci looks at the camera, eyebrows raised. Smug little shit…
“You don’t think that’s a bit much for the Morovan people to believe?”
“I think it’s the truth, and I trust the people to believe the truth. And I can’t help but wonder why you haven’t named the person w
ho gave you those photos.”
“A good reporter doesn’t name his sources,” Ricci says, tapping the legal pad in his lap with his pen. “Let’s talk more about the truth, since you bring it up. You want the public to believe that you and Amanda Sparks – an American commoner – met, fell in love and absolutely couldn’t wait to get married. All in the space of two weeks.”
What did Maria call this guy? Bastardo? I like that word. It suits him to a T.
“Again, I trust the people to believe the truth,” Dante says.
“And it’s not a ploy to fool the people into believing that you’ve changed your ways? An attempt, perhaps, to quell the many rumors that swirl around you? The ones that form the basis for Chancellor Huber’s campaign to call for a referendum on the monarchy?”
“Those rumors are exactly that: rumors. Amanda and I are in love, and we’re very happy. Or we were until this nonsense hit the airwaves yesterday.”
“And your marriage was totally spontaneous?”
Uh-oh. My stomach drops. Tread carefully, Dante.
“It was… unexpected, yes. I never thought I could fall in love with anyone, let alone someone I just met. But fate had other plans for me. I can’t help but believe there was divine intervention of some sort.”
Ricci’s fingers are tented under his chin in thought.
“Divine intervention,” he says. “Tell me, Your Highness: does this divine intervention extend to other members of the family? Say, to your new father-in-law?”
Oh, shit. No. Please, no.
Dante’s eyes narrow. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a money transfer in the sum of more than two million euros to the bank account of Isaac Sparks, Amanda’s father, the morning of the wedding.”
“Why, you little cocksucker,” Carlo mutters.
We all stop and gape at him, shocked.
“I’m sorry,” he grumbles. “I’m angry.”
“It was a gift,” Dante says hesitantly. “From my personal fortune.”
“And you just gave it to him out of the goodness of your heart?”
Dante leans forward in his chair and levels a finger at Ricci’s nose.