by Olivia Gates
Hot tears corroded her eyes, scouring down her face, splashing down her chin to spread darkness on her red taffeta dress, his choice. Had he planned that, too? So that she’d look down and see the stains spreading like oozing blood? Were those tears, or was her pierced heart bleeding out?
More needed to gush out of her. “Have you appeased your monstrous pride? Have you taken your revenge on me for once daring to escape your abuse? Are you now satisfied that you’ve damaged me beyond repair? And you’re asking my opinion on your ‘pure woman’—me, the woman whose innocence you took, whose pride and heart you destroyed and who you’re reviling for it? But I can’t blame you. I set myself up. Again. I got what I deserved. But though I now know that my opinion—and I—mean less than dirt to you, I’ll tell you I believe that Clarissa would make the best queen. I just wish for her sake you weren’t the one who’ll be king.”
Run. She had to run. Pride had nothing to do with it—it was maternal instinct. The baby inside her was the one thing that gave her the strength to get away, to survive.
She passed him, reached the door when she turned. “I once told you we owed each other no hellos. I owe you one thing now, a wish…” He was standing there, chest heaving, eyes scary, his focus that of a madman. Pain ruptured her heart all over again, crushed it in its own blood. “I wish for you to go to hell, Leandro. The same one where you sent me.”
Fifteen
Itake it all back. Every word I said was an unforgivable lie. I was cut open and bleeding and I went mad. Forgive me.
The pleas looped like a broken record inside his head.
They hadn’t made it out of his mouth.
He’d stood there, mute, as she’d turned away, looking like everything inside her had been crushed. He’d stood there until she’d disappeared. Then he’d collapsed to his knees and remained there for several mind-destroying hours, reliving every word she’d said, suffering every pang she had, burning at every tear she’d shed.
Then he’d launched himself after her. But it had been too late.
A murderous Julia railed against him with the rage of a lioness on the scent of blood. She had a formidable ally in an outraged and disgusted Paolo. Among them, they made sure Phoebe’s trail was stonecold.
That had been three months ago.
He’d gone stark raving mad within three hours.
He’d become dangerous. Everyone was regretting pursuing him so hard to take on the succession. Having an insane crown prince, one with all this power, was a recipe for disaster. He might yet be the end of the monarchy and Castaldini, much sooner than the king’s worst fears.
He needed Phoebe. He had to find her, prostrate himself at her feet, beg her forgiveness, take back every word, erase every hurt, to remain sane. He couldn’t. So he…rampaged.
Just this morning, he’d thrown a delegate out during a televised negotiation session. Bodily. Right there on the live feed, he’d lunged at the offensive weasel, bundled him up like a soiled sweatshirt, marched him, kicking like a cat about to be dropped in boiling oil, down the stairs and out the palace door. It made world news within minutes. Along with the details of the brewing international incident.
He hadn’t even missed a beat before he’d stalked to his jet and gotten the hell out of Castaldini on another search for her, following the last lead he’d gotten. It had been another false one. He’d just finished putting the investigative agency who’d supplied him with it out of business.
“When will you stop your never-ending tantrum?”
Ernesto’s disapproval jolted its icy tranquility through him.
“Not a good time, Ernesto,” he barked. “Not a good life.”
“She doesn’t want you to find her. Why don’t you move on?”
“Why don’t you, Ernesto? Before I throw another ‘tantrum’?”
“As long as getting violent makes you feel better.”
“Nothing will make me feel better. Ever.”
“Finished being melodramatic? I never thought I’d say something like this, but if she left in such a condition that made her family wish you dead, maybe you don’t deserve to find her.”
Leandro closed his eyes. He was only hanging on because she was there, and safe, somewhere in this world. But he didn’t deserve to find her. That was why he hadn’t. Ernesto was right.
Then the moment of sanity passed and frustration sheared through him again, tearing his eyes open. “No, Ernesto, I don’t deserve to find her. But I have to, if only to offer her the chance to finish me herself and take her revenge.”
Ernesto pursed his lips. “I fail to imagine what you could have done to her this time. If she left you, left Castaldini and her family, evidently never to return, then you’ve hurt her beyond repair. Even worse than the first time, when she left because she felt she meant nothing to you.”
Incredulity boomed out of him. “Where did you get that piece of unadulterated crap? Are you claiming that she told you—?”
“She told me nothing. She never did.”
“So that is your interpretation? That she meant nothing to me? Dio, Ernesto, how can you think anything so insane? You saw how much I needed her. You yourself, who advised me not to spend crucial time with her, saw how unable I was to even consider your advice.”
“What I saw was a young man in the throes of an all-consuming passion, but that didn’t indicate any true or lasting emotions. Many times as I escorted her to you I found myself aching for her. She was so eager to come to you, so amenable to your decree of secrecy. But I always felt her pain. You might have been blind, but I saw her face many times when you passed her at a function with another woman on your arm. My sympathy must have started to color my expression, because she once asked—with such shyness and trepidation—if I was reluctant to play the role of go-between. When I assured her I wasn’t, she persisted. She felt my disapproval. Did I fear she was distracting you? Harming your campaign for the crown? Was I offended by her behavior? I vehemently denied it. But I realized later, I did disapprove, I was disappointed and offended. By your handling of her and the situation.
“I did recommend that you leave her alone, not because I thought the crown was more important than her, but because you were not giving this exquisite woman the respect and consideration she deserved. And I started to fear you were incapable of giving them to her. You might have decreed the secrecy a necessity, insisted that you hated it, but to me it started to look like you were having your cake and eating it, too. At her expense. And if I can suspect you, do you wonder she had no faith in your intentions toward her?”
“Dio, how could you have doubted me?” he groaned. “I would never treat even a woman I disrespected with anything but dignity, but Phoebe…Didn’t you see the power of my involvement?”
“I did, but I had no idea of its true nature. I even feared it for its very power, for being unprecedented. You were behaving out of character, and your next steps became a total mystery to me. But then, there was only one projection, really. You’d worked for the crown since you took your first steps. And I believed that if you had to take it at the cost of casting Phoebe aside and taking the wife it came with, that you would have done it.”
“How could you have been so wrong about me?” Leandro exploded. “I only kept her a secret because they wouldn’t have given me a fair chance at the crown if they’d known beforehand that I wouldn’t marry the queen they wanted beside me on the throne. But I had only one plan—to make Phoebe my princess, my queen, at any cost. And if I couldn’t have both her and the crown, I would have chosen her. But I had to give the chance to get them both all I had first.”
“And you told me that? You certainly didn’t tell her.”
“You know I don’t discuss my plans before they bear fruit. I couldn’t promise her what I didn’t yet have to give.”
“And she was supposed to…do what? Just know? Trust you?”
“Yes.” This was bellowed.
“I never thought you had unreasonableness in y
our makeup, not even when you were knowingly going against everything Castaldini stood for. You had every right then, according to your set of beliefs. But to demand that she trust you based on intentions you never declared, that goes beyond perverse.”
“What’s perverse about expecting the woman who trusted me with her heart and body—Maledizione, her life, when she came to me with no one knowing—to trust me to be a man of honor?”
“But that was probably why she believed she didn’t have any place in your heart or life—because she believed you are one. A man of honor who wasn’t honor-bound by the promises he hadn’t made. A man of honor who had a momentous destiny, one that from every possible indication, didn’t include her.”
Leandro’s heart stampeded. His skull seemed to squeeze his brain until he felt it would crush it. He couldn’t…He never…He didn’t…
“And when you saw how her desertion devastated me, you still didn’t realize how much she meant to me?”
“How could I have known you weren’t devastated over the other catastrophes that had taken place at that time? How could I have guessed, when you seemed to remember her only four months later, sent me to fetch her without a word, and two hours later she ran out, begging me to take her back? I never saw anyone more miserable.”
And he howled. “Dio…how can this be? How can I have behaved in such a way that I misguided you both, the man I value most, the woman who means everything to me, so totally about my emotions and intentions?”
“You were always the best at everything except the one thing you had no practice in. Relationships. But I understand now. A man of your capacity for commitment and passion, in love for the first time, at the most trying time of his life. You had tunnel vision, leading to your goal, couldn’t perceive anything from anybody else’s perspective. And both Phoebe and I were guilty of perpetuating that problem, catering to your every whim and accommodating your every demand, giving you the impression that all was well.”
“But even if I was a fool who gave her no indication of my feelings, that was before I was exiled. When I brought her to New York…Dio, I told her I needed her.”
“As what? And why only then? And how do you think she should have handled that out-of-the-blue admission? It might have been a precedent for you to admit you needed anyone, but to her it could have meant something very different. That you needed her as the ever-faithful, ever-accommodating lover who would provide a convenient outlet for your tumultuous emotions at the time. How could she have done anything but refuse to be that, to walk away before you destroyed her?”
“Dio…Dio…she couldn’t have believed that…. She would have had to think I was unscrupulous, heartless…a monster to believe that.”
“Not really. Just a man who’d suffered a grave injury and was looking for the best salve for his wounds. It still didn’t mean you wanted her forever.”
“What about the time I sent you to her again? That was five years after she walked out on me. What did that action signify to you, if not my continued commitment?”
“The day I arrived and learned she’d announced her engagement, I thought you were dangling yourself again to get her to break it off with Armando.”
“You thought I was being a spiteful son-of-a-bitch? A dog in the manger? Don’t you know me at all, Ernesto?”
“I did think of other reasons, but after a five-year silence, none of them was in your favor. I saw her whenever I could, and it always broke my heart to feel her still hoping for a word from you. A word I could never deliver. You were busy playing the martyr, it seems, in your own version of reality.”
“She did accuse me of living in a universe starring me…” He dropped his head into his fists, pressing with all his strength against his temples, to stop it from exploding.
Ernesto went on. “But that was then. What did you do differently this time? Besides desire, what emotions did you confess?”
“Everything. I showed her in every way the depth of my involvement, which is a hundred times stronger than my past love.”
“You probably only think you gave sufficient proof of your emotions. You believed the same in the past, and you were totally wrong. Is it any wonder she left you again?”
“That’s not—not what happened…Dio, Ernesto, everything was beyond perfect and I believed in her again, would have never believed any evidence against her, but when the evidence was her own words…Dio…I heard her, Ernesto.”
Ernesto’s frown was spectacular. “You heard her? Saying what? In what context? And to whom?”
“She was gloating about her total power over me, to Stella—”
“Stella?” The name was an explosion of disdain and revulsion.
Leandro understood too well. After his exile, he’d discovered what a vile creature she was. “Dio, si…anything she said to Stella had to have been provoked, no doubt a defense against the acid that drips from that witch’s tongue. But I—I think I lost my mind. All I could think was that my worst nightmares were true, that she’d been manipulating me from day one, never wanted me for myself and I—I told her I’d choose a wife, but never her…and more…and by the time I regained my senses, she was gone.”
He stopped, retched at the memory of the vile things he’d said, at realizing the enormity of his crime against her yet again. At the look in Ernesto’s eyes.
“I struck you only once, Leandro.”
Leandro shoved a fist against his heart, wanting to punch through his rib cage and snatch it out. Maybe then it would stop battering his insides to a pulp. “I might have been only eleven then, but if you think I can ever forget the slap that sent me hurtling to the ground, think again.”
“In case you’ve rewritten history in that intractable mind of yours, let me refresh your memory. You accused a servant of stealing and he was punished, only for me to discover later that you built your case against him based on nothing more than that it ‘made sense’ to you. You’ve used that same kind of senseless sense again on Phoebe. And not only have you accused her, you’ve condemned and punished her. And you dare to seek her now? You think no one can ever look beyond your assets to want you for yourself, so you keep superimposing your suspicions on everyone’s actions. I think you’ve gone too far this time. And you’ve lost the woman you failed to deserve.”
Leandro exploded to his feet. “No. I can’t lose her, Ernesto. I came to my senses without needing proof. I was mad to suspect her, and it will never happen again. I would die in atonement, I would die anyway for her, without hesitation, but I’d rather live for her, spend every minute of my life making her happy and fulfilled.”
Ernesto looked at him as if he was giving him a total mind and psyche scan. Just as Leandro felt as if he’d start destroying the place in a fit of helplessness and frustration, Ernesto nodded, as if coming to a decision. Then he said a clipped, “You may deserve another chance.”
The bark that exploded from Leandro’s depth felt as if it cut a sac of bitterness open inside him. “Grazie. As if your opinion matters. It’s hers, and only hers, that does.”
To Leandro’s shock, a wicked smile spread across Ernesto’s lips. “Oh, but my opinion does matter. If you’d failed to change it, I would never have told you where to find her.”
Sixteen
Leandro stood at the end of the driveway of the delightful one-level detached house that Phoebe now called home. She wouldn’t call it that one more day. Even if it killed him.
Suddenly his senses flickered.
The emanations were unmistakable. Hers.
He swung around. And there she was. In white slacks, a loose turquoise top and ponytail, she was so unbearably precious, so brutally missed, a convulsion of emotion ripped through him. Her face was frozen with the same look of horror and devastation he’d last seen on it.
He whispered, “Forgive me, mi galia amore.”
After their long sessions in the whispering gallery, they no longer needed its medium. He knew she’d heard him.
And she
ran. Tried to escape into her house.
He wouldn’t let her lock him out, his heart splintering for having to exert any force against her.
She suddenly backed away from the door, let him charge in under his unopposed pressure.
As soon as he closed it she hissed at him. “What do you want? More games? Sex? You decided you don’t want to get married immediately, so you’ll toy with me again until you do?”
“No…no…per Dio, Phoebe…no.”
“You don’t want sex? You’ve found a new nympho? Or is your harem already full of them?”
“Li imploro…I beg you…I only want to beg your forgiveness—”
“Why? You think maybe I didn’t deserve having you tread on me like you did? That you should have been a tad less brutal? You’re having conscience pangs? Do you even have a conscience, Leandro?”
“I don’t have anything, without you.”
She lurched as if he’d backhanded her. “You…bastard. Why are you doing this? What reminded you of me again, all of a sudden?”
“I’ve been looking for you, to beg your forgiveness, your return, since the day you walked away.”
“Liar. Every word you said, every smile, every touch, every moment, you lied. And you’re still lying. You showed me your real face that day. A monster’s. If you think I’ll ever forget it…”
“Did it look like the face of a monster or a madman, Phoebe?”
“I don’t care. It wasn’t the face of the man I thought I knew, the man I loved. It was the cruel, warped, sick…”
She choked on emotion and he urged her on. “Yes, Phoebe. Call me names, scream at me, shred me with your rage.”
She swayed away from him, escaping his begging hands. “Get out. And I don’t care if you are a crown prince or the most powerful man in the world. Come near me again and I’ll make you sorry.”