King's Ransom

by Amelia Autin

  She glanced down at the engagement ring on her finger, the ring Andre had given her just a little while ago that had featured prominently in their engagement photos—a large oval tanzanite gemstone of a peculiar saturated shade of blue with a purplish hue shimmering around it, surrounded by an impressive circle of diamonds.

  “The original ring belonged to my grandmother,” he’d told her as he’d slid it into place on her ring finger. “She had small hands, like you. But the central stone was a sapphire that paled in comparison to your eyes, so I replaced it with tanzanite.” He’d smiled that faint smile she loved. “But even this stone does not do justice to your eyes, Juliana. Nothing could.” After a deep breath he’d added, “I have been waiting eleven years to give this ring to you.”

  Hearing his words in her mind reminded her that second chances were granted to a very, very select few. She was going to grab at her second chance with both hands and never look back, just as Mara had done. “Now it begins,” she said softly, then repeated the words in Zakharan, a smile wreathing her face.

  A noise from the entrance to her bedroom made Juliana whirl around. Two men stood framed in the doorway. One man she recognized as one of the bodyguards assigned to guard her when she was outside her suite—Andre had introduced her less than an hour ago to the men on duty protecting her. The other was Andre’s cousin, clutching a pistol in his right hand, his left arm wrapped around his hapless victim’s throat. And the malevolent expression on his face was one she’d never imagined she would see there. Not in a million years.

  Chapter 18

  Five men stood in Andre’s private office. Four of them were absolutely convinced of Prince Xavier’s guilt. The fifth, Andre, insisted on going over the evidence against his cousin, his lifelong friend—what little there was of it—one more time.

  “A court would never convict Zax,” he stated firmly. “Not without proof. Where is your proof?”

  The other four men exchanged glances. Then Damon spoke. “No one else has a motive, Sire.”

  “Motive is not nearly enough.”

  Lukas added softly, “He is the head of the protection details, Sire. Yours as well as Miss Richardson’s. He has knowledge of your movements and hers few other men possess.”

  “True, but knowledge alone is not proof.”

  Lieutenant Marek Zale stepped forward. After he’d been pulled off the contingent assigned to guard Juliana, he’d worked behind the scenes coordinating her protective detail, and Andre already had it in his mind to promote the man once Juliana became his queen. “The incident with the car was not an accident,” Marek said now. “Of that we are sure. This brings us back to knowledge of Miss Richardson’s movements, Sire, something Prince Xavier would have.”

  Lukas spoke up. “You know the light that fell was no accident. But I cannot see Prince Xavier having either the access or the time to accomplish this. A coconspirator would be necessary, most likely one of the crew who could be up there working on the lights and not be questioned. Someone who knew what scene was to be filmed, though, and who would be on that bed. There could only have been one target. And Prince Xavier has been on the set almost every day, ‘checking out the security.’ He would know the filming schedule.”

  “The helicopter’s engine was tampered with,” the military pilot insisted. “But whether the target was you, Sire, or Miss Richardson, we cannot be certain, but either way...the intent was murder. Could Prince Xavier have done it? Yes. He has access to that restricted area. Military access. And he is a trained helicopter pilot—he flew one in Afghanistan. Not a mechanic, that is true, but still...he has knowledge of helicopters and how they operate. It would take specialized knowledge to disable the engine in such a way that it would fail only after extended usage. If the helicopter had crashed, there would have been nothing showing it was anything but a tragic accident. But he did not necessarily have to do it himself.”

  “Each incident indicates someone with different skills,” Andre argued. “While the man who sabotaged the light or tampered with the helicopter engine could also have driven the car, it is unlikely the same man did both the light and the engine. So yes, I believe there is a conspiracy. But it does not necessarily include Zax.”

  “But why make these attempts look like accidents?” Damon asked. “So much easier, so much more certain, to use a gun or a rifle to assassinate her or you if death was the only motive. Only someone who stood to gain by the death of either or both of you would want the deaths to appear accidental, so no suspicion would fall upon him. And should anything happen to Miss Richardson, Sire, or to you,” Damon said reasonably, “it could only benefit Prince Xavier. No one else. He is your heir.”

  Lukas cleared his throat and jumped in. “Everyone who has seen you since Miss Richardson’s arrival knows she is the one, Sire,” he said softly. “Marianescus love once, then never again. All Zakhar knows this—it is not a secret. And you are a Marianescu. If Miss Richardson were to die...you would have no heir but Prince Xavier. Ever.”

  “My cousin has known of my plans regarding Miss Richardson for at least three years.” Andre’s tone was harsh. “Ever since I posted men to guard her in America.”

  “Yes, but she was in Hollywood then,” Lukas said, “and no threat to the succession. Now she is here. Two attempts have already been made on her life since she arrived in Zakhar, and the attempt on your life—the helicopter—could also have resulted in her death.”

  Damon and Lukas are right, Andre told himself as he tried to put emotion aside and think logically. Proof or no proof, only Zax stands to gain from these attempts. No one else. And yet, he couldn’t believe it of Zax. Niko, yes. He could easily believe it of Niko. But not Zax. And he couldn’t condemn his cousin to death without evidence merely because he had the only known motive. Could he?

  Less than a year ago he’d sent Lukas and Damon to the United States with orders to shadow Trace McKinnon—the man who was now his brother-in-law—and kill him should it become necessary, in the name of protecting his sister. He hadn’t hesitated then. Why was he hesitating now? Juliana was no less precious to him than Mara. He would kill to protect her, no question. But not in cold blood. Not like this. “I will not believe him guilty of seeking my death, or Miss Richardson’s.”

  The other four men exchanged skeptical glances, but no one spoke until Damon said, “How many ‘accidents’ must occur before you believe what is plain to us, your men? Men who have sworn to keep you safe or die trying. There is not a man among us who would not give his life for yours, but would you ask us to throw away our lives merely because you do not want to accept the truth?”

  Andre’s face hardened at Damon’s final argument. He still refused to believe in Zax’s guilt, but he had to act—not just for Juliana or himself, but for the men risking their lives to protect them. With great power comes great responsibility, he reminded himself. He’d never shirked the difficult life-and-death decisions most men never even imagined making. He couldn’t do so now. Not even when the man in question was his dearest friend, closer to him than the ties of blood that bound them.

  The ties of blood.

  A thought occurred to him, startling in its simplicity. If Zax were arrested, tried and convicted of high treason, Niko would become Andre’s heir until he had a son to supplant his cousin in the succession...assuming he and Juliana had a son. Was it possible this was Niko’s doing? All of it? Not just the attacks on Juliana, but the assassination attempts by supposed traditionalists like Zax? Tampering with the royal helicopter? All designed to kill him and throw suspicion—if suspicion was aroused—on Zax? Niko’s own brother?

  And Juliana. Why try to kill Juliana now? As he’d told his men, Zax had known Andre’s intentions regarding Juliana from the beginning. If Zax wanted to keep Juliana away from him, he could have killed her at any time, not waited until she arrived in Zakhar. And if Zax had wanted Juliana dead, she would be dead. The same goes for me. If Zax truly wanted me dead, I would be dead already.


  But Niko hadn’t known about Andre’s plans in advance the way Zax had. Not until Juliana arrived would anyone here other than Zax have known my intentions toward her. Including Niko. Now everything made sense, including the slender evidence that pointed to Zax—evidence arranged to point to Zax. And Andre knew what he had to do.

  Then he went cold all over. If Niko was behind the attempts on Juliana’s life...then he’d just upped the ante. He’d just increased Niko’s motive to kill her by announcing their engagement. If anything happens to Juliana, he thought with icy self-recrimination, the blame is mine.

  He quickly dismissed the pilot with a brief word of thanks, then turned to Lukas and Damon. “Find Prince Xavier,” he ordered them curtly. “Bring him to me. Do not kill him,” he added in no uncertain terms. “But do not let him out of your sight. Understood?”

  He waited until they left, then said softly to Marek, “Take as many men as you need and find Prince Nikolai. Arrest him. Then bring him to me.”

  “Arrest Prince Nikolai?” The surprise on Marek’s face was apparent.

  “Arrest him. He is the man behind these attempts to kill Miss Richardson...and me. Be very careful—he will be as dangerous as a cornered rat. But I want him alive. Understood?”

  * * *

  Juliana watched in horror as Niko reversed the pistol in his hand and with savage force clubbed the man he was holding just behind the right ear. The man crumpled. Niko then pointed the gun at Juliana. “Tie him up. Do it!” he added harshly as she hesitated. He turned the pistol until it was aimed at the other man’s defenseless body. “Or I will kill him now.”

  Her automatic instinct was to run, to escape however she could, but Juliana knew she couldn’t outrun a bullet. She also couldn’t let Niko shoot a man in cold blood. She glanced desperately around the room, and her gaze lit on the belt to one of her dresses thrown across the bed. She grabbed it, and although her senses were screaming at her not to get any closer to Niko than she already was, she made short work of tying the man’s hands. She didn’t dare tie them loosely—Niko was watching her closely, and the barrel of the pistol had shifted until it was pointing directly at her.

  Then she stood up and met Niko’s eyes.

  “You should never have returned to Zakhar,” he told her, breaking the silence that was fraught with danger. At first she was frozen by the threat confronting her, but then she retreated from him until she came up against the far wall. Niko followed her slowly, as if he knew she couldn’t escape, then stopped two feet away. “You should never have agreed to marry Andre,” he added, repressed anger in his voice. “Why did you? Was the humiliation of eleven years ago not enough to keep you away from him forever?”

  Juliana didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. Her mind was working feverishly at the sudden revelation that Niko knew more than he should about what had happened eleven years ago, but whatever answer she gave could trigger violence. He was already primed to go off—his expression made that very clear.

  Niko brought the gun up to caress her cheek with the barrel. “So beautiful,” he said with regret. “I wanted you, did you know that? But it was always Andre with you despite my best efforts. You never looked at another man while he was around.” His eyes narrowed until they were mere slits. “I plotted to have you anyway,” he continued, his rapacious designs on her obvious. “But you were never alone. You were always with Mara or one of your other friends. I was never able to figure out a way to abduct you without risk to me.”

  “Andre would have killed you.” The breathless words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

  His face contracted with anger and jealousy. “You are right. Even though he had not yet staked his own claim to you, he would have killed me if I touched you against your will.” His hand clenched on the gun as he spewed out the hatred that had been building up for years. “Andre, the perfect prince. How I despised that about him. So damned perfect. He never put a foot wrong. Like a god. Even my own father wished I could be more like him. And the citizens of Zakhar adored him—why? Why him, and not me? Because he was the Crown Prince, that is why. He had everything. Everything that should have been mine save for an accident of birth.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Juliana asked through stiff lips. “Aren’t you forgetting Zax?”

  “My brother?” Niko asked dismissively. “No, I had my own plans for Zax.” He laughed softly, a sound of pure evil. “Whose gun do you think this is?” His smile told her he planned to kill her with one of Zax’s guns and let his brother take the blame for her death. Since they shared the royal residence that had been their father’s, Niko had access to everything that was Zax’s. It also meant he had access to plant evidence against his brother. “I had plans for both of them,” Niko continued. “But it was Andre I wanted to hurt most. And I made him pay. Oh yes, I made him pay in blood.”

  She managed one word. “How?”

  “I followed you that night. You never knew, did you? You were so obvious in your attraction to Andre, it was easy to guess what you would try to do before you left. So I watched and waited. And you did not disappoint me. You were easy to follow, Juliana. For once you were alone, and I almost took you that night. But then I realized letting you go to Andre was better for my long-range plan.” He laughed again. “You were so easy to manipulate after that. Almost as easy to manipulate as Andre’s father.” The barrel of the gun moved down her cheek, brushed her neck, then came to rest against one breast.

  She suppressed a shiver of horror. “What did you do, Niko?”

  “How do you think Andre’s father found out about the two of you?” he asked. “I told him, of course,” he said, answering his own question. “He was oblivious to the danger you represented until I brought it to his attention. But then he was determined to keep you apart. You were not of royal blood. You were not even of noble blood. And his obsession with the monarchy meant you were not good enough for his precious son.” Niko sneered. “Andre’s father was too obsessed to realize I had my own motives for keeping you away from Andre. He refused to believe it was you or no one where Andre was concerned, although I knew. He was pathetically easy to convince that Andre did not really love you—that you were merely a passing fancy—because he wanted to believe.”

  Inside Juliana was gasping as everything fell neatly into place, but she managed to keep it from her expression. “So it was all your doing?”

  He snorted. “Hardly. Give credit where credit is due. I could not order the phone company to keep Andre’s calls to you from going through, or yours to him. I could not control the postal service, email and internet in Zakhar. Only he could. And when Andre insisted—in defiance of his father—on serving with his unit when they went to Afghanistan, the king consoled himself with the thought that at least Andre could not go to you in America.” His expression turned introspective for a moment. “Too bad Andre did not die in combat as I hoped he would.”

  He shook that divergent thought off. “No, Juliana, I merely suggested what the king needed to do, and he did it. All of it. But I knew. Every step of the way, I knew.”

  He smiled a cold, cruel smile. “I thought the money was a nice touch,” he said softly, menacingly. “And the message. That was the one thing you could not forgive, could you? It drove you away from Andre as it was intended to do.”

  She closed her eyes briefly as guilt washed through her, remembering how very nearly Niko had succeeded in separating her from Andre...permanently. Then she opened her eyes as Niko continued.

  “But I had to be sure you would stay away. I could not let you marry Andre and give him heirs, heirs that would supplant Zax and me in the line of succession. So I had to make sure Andre would not pursue you when you did not return to Zakhar as he expected.”

  Even though she’d already been cold with terror, a chill ran through her as she grasped his meaning. “It was you? You were behind that lying story in the press?”

  He laughed once more, and this time Juliana heard the
insanity he’d kept hidden all this time. “Brilliant, was it not? I bribed that man to lie about being your lover. And I confirmed it. Confidentially, of course, but I knew I was fairly safe in doing so. The press shield laws in your country meant the reporter would keep his sources confidential. Zakhar’s laws are different, but...” He shrugged.

  The barrel of the gun moved once more, until it was pointing at Juliana’s heart. “That is how I made Andre bleed,” he gloated. “The only thing that would have made it more perfect was if I had been the man. My revenge would have been complete. But even without that it was bad enough for him. His precious Juliana sleeping with another man, taking a lover other than him. What a blow that was to his heart. And to his ego. He suffered,” Niko said, taking a perverse pleasure in the fact. “Oh, how he suffered.”

  The insane light in his eyes faded for a moment. “I almost overplayed my hand there,” he said thoughtfully. “It could have killed Andre’s love for you, made him more amenable to his father’s constant pressure to marry European royalty and beget heirs. But the temptation to make him bleed was too great to resist.” Then he smiled again, and Juliana couldn’t prevent the shiver that coursed through her. “But I was counting on the curse of the Marianescus. And I was right.”

  “Not a curse, Niko,” said a stern voice from the other side of the room. “It is our greatest strength.”

  Niko jerked as if he’d been shot. He swung around to face Andre, who’d stepped out from behind the tapestry covering the secret passageway between his bedroom and Juliana’s, and for a second the gun wasn’t pointing at Juliana. But before she could escape Niko grabbed her around the waist and pulled her tight against his body, the gun pressed against her temple.

  “Not one step closer,” he warned.

  “Or what?” Andre demanded. “Or you will shoot her?” He shook his head. “You will shoot her anyway. That was your intention the minute you walked into this room with a gun.” He took a step toward them, then another.