Prince's Son of Scandal

by Dani Collins

  He didn’t have a particular affinity for children, not having had a childhood to speak of himself. Royal duties took him into contact with them, but children were just one more foreign culture with whom certain rituals were observed. He didn’t live among them or desire to.

  What he did understand was that they were vulnerable. Those who exploited the weak were beneath contempt. Only a true monster would hurt someone as helpless as a nine-year-old girl, especially sexually.

  “I didn’t think I could get pregnant.” Trella’s thin voice echoed off the concrete and steel of his garage, underpinned by the drone of the fan. Her profile was pale and still, grayed by the half-light beyond the row of windows in the doors. “The damage he did was that bad. Do you understand what I’m saying? Because I don’t want to get any more specific.”

  A twisted, anguished feeling struck his middle, clenching talons around his chest and squeezing his throat, pushing fear and helplessness to such heights inside him, it became a pressure he could barely withstand. He knew his heart was beating because it throbbed with painful pounds that rang in his ears, but he couldn’t move or speak.

  There were no words, no reactions, that fit this situation. Only a primal scream that would have no effect whatsoever. It wouldn’t reverse the past, wouldn’t erase her dark memories. He was at a complete loss.

  “When I realized I was pregnant, I had to give the baby a chance. Even though the odds were against it. I’ve been expecting a miscarriage every single day. What was the point in telling you if I was only going to lose it? Even now, I’m terrified of becoming too attached in case something happens.”

  It was his. The knowledge crashed over him like a wave, bringing a sharp sting of heightened awareness to his whole body. It changed everything. His entire life, every decision and action, filtered in a blur through this lens of a new life they had created.

  The cogs in his brain finally began turning, but with a rustiness that scraped at his detachment.

  “So this is...delicate?” What if she lost it? For some reason, neat as that solution might sound, the idea appalled him. “Are you all right?” He should have asked these questions the minute he’d had her alone. “Has this put you into labor? Are you in pain?”

  “No.” She skimmed her hair out of her eyes and let herself relax into the seat of the car, hands settling over her bump. Her complexion was pale, but she sounded calm. “We’re both quite healthy, all things considered. But I see a specialist in London and she wants me on bed rest for the third trimester. She was an intern in Spain when I was a child and knows everything I’ve been through. I’ll let your doctor take my blood, but I’m not giving some stranger my medical history. He touches my arm. That’s it.”

  He nodded, still trying to put the pieces together.

  “I know I should have told you sooner, but I also knew that if I carried this baby to a stage where it could survive birth, then I would have to marry you. I don’t want to.”

  Her gaze finally came up, striking into him like a harsh winter wind. Bleak.

  “I thought if I ever married, it would be for love.” Despondency pulled her brows together and her thick lashes swept down to hide her eyes again. “That makes me sound like a romantic and I’m not. I just don’t want to be something taken on in sufferance. My sister fell in love. I know it’s possible.”

  Her elbow came up to rest on the door and she set her teeth on her thumbnail.

  “Plus, my life is already high profile. Yours is worse.” Her hand dropped away and she flashed him a look of blame. “Why can’t you be a mechanic or something? Your life comes with even more restrictions than I imposed on myself. Why would I sign up for that? Of course I avoided telling you.”

  He certainly wouldn’t live this life if he had a choice, but it struck him as odd that she disparaged his station. Every other woman aspired to be his queen.

  “So, yes, I’ve handled this badly. God knows I’ve been informed of that more than once.” She rolled her eyes. “I probably owe you an apology.”

  “Probably?” Did she have any idea the damage she had caused by avoiding him?

  “I’m not sorry. I will never be sorry that I’m trying to have our baby.” Her chin came up, defiant and fierce, but with deep vulnerability edging her unblinking eyes.

  Something stirred in him. Gratitude? How? This baby was a disaster.

  As if she read his mind, the corners of her mouth went down. “And I think we’ll do enough damage to each other in the next while that if we start apologizing now, we’ll be peaking way too early.”

  Never trust anyone who can’t make or take a joke, his father had told him once. Your grandmother, for instance, had been the rest of the crack.

  His grandmother. Yes, indeed, there would be hell to pay and many, many apologies to make.

  Before he could fully grasp the scope of impact, a dull buzz emanated from the front of her shirt. “Goodness, an hour gone already?” She reached inside her collar to bring her phone from her bra, voice shaken but trying for lighthearted. “Hola, Henri. I’m fine. Just congratulating the father of my child. Does he look green to you?”

  * * *

  Trella could ignore the signs for only so long. The nausea churning in her belly, the heart palpitations, the hot and cold sweats. An attack was upon her. Of course it was. This was one of the most stressful days of her life and she was doing everything wrong, making it worse. Maybe she did self-sabotage, the way her brother Ramon sometimes accused, but she would rather eat live worms than admit he was right about anything.

  She hated to admit any sort of weakness, because she knew, deep down, that she was weak. There was no hiding it from her family, but few others knew exactly what a basket case she was. That’s why she’d spent so many years sequestered in the family compound. It had provided the security and stability she’d needed to overcome the worst of her issues, but it had kept her pride intact, too.

  Ridiculous pride that kept her from admitting she was falling apart to Xavier and his doctor.

  Gunter took her blood then her blood pressure, which he noted was elevated. He frowned and began asking pointed questions about her pregnancy.

  She clammed up. The truth was, she wasn’t combative as a result of being kidnapped. She’d been born that way, much to her family’s eternal frustration. Her experience only gave her an excuse for it.

  At her silence, Xavier turned from the window where he’d been standing in quiet contemplation. “Pass the readings to her specialist. She can determine if further action is necessary and advise a treatment plan. Request her doctor come to Lirona as soon as possible and stay for the duration of the pregnancy.”

  “She has other patients,” Trella pointed out.

  “None so important as you,” he stated with a humorless smile.

  “Flatterer,” she tried, but her own sense of humor was buried beneath an onslaught of sensory overload ticking toward detonation.

  “Sir, I’ve performed many deliveries,” the doctor argued. “There’s no need—”

  “Sweeten the deal however you must. Our women’s health initiative is due for an upgrade, I’m sure. Expenses won’t be spared.”

  “Very generous, sir,” the royal physician said more firmly. “I’m sure many Elazarians would benefit, but...” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps such an undertaking should wait until DNA results are received.”

  “The results are for the Queen. I’m confident this is my heir. But I do have to inform her. Bella, please advise your brother we’ll be on the move again, but not for long. The palace isn’t far.”

  That was when she should have said, I can’t.

  She knew what kind of self-care was needed. A quiet, dark room. A sibling holding her hand, talking her down from her mental ledge.

  She didn’t say anything. Her stupid, tender pride, knocked
to the ground so many times, locked her teeth while the rest of her began a slow collapse.

  Now she sat in the back of his sedan, gripping her elbows as the ghouls came for her. It was going to be a bad one. She could taste it. The sheer frustration of not being able to stave it off made her eyes sting. Her mind spun down ever more scary avenues. Dark, harmful thoughts crowded in, feeding the anxiety.

  This is my life now.

  There would be no escape from the attention. It would be worse. Harsher. More judgmental. All the things she had tried to avoid by keeping her pregnancy secret and withholding the father’s name were going to come true now.

  The pressure in her chest grew worse, suffocating her, and even though her specialist had assured her from the beginning that suffering an attack wouldn’t hurt the baby, she was convinced it would, knew it. She was going to lose her baby because she couldn’t control these awful spells.

  While Xavier watched her lose everything. He would reject her for being the disaster she was. Even if she managed to keep his baby and deliver it some weeks from now, he would take it from her. He might have her locked away.

  She needed Gili. She took out her phone and gripped it so hard her hand ached. Where were Henri and Ramon? They wouldn’t let anyone take her baby. They would always keep her safe.

  No. She couldn’t keep expecting them to turn up and save her from herself.

  “Why are you breathing like that? Are you asthmatic?”

  She shook her head and turned her face to the window, wanting to die because now he’d noticed she was off and was staring at her.

  “I’ll ask Gunter if he reached your doctor.” He started to lean forward.

  She grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t.”

  “You’re flushed.” He touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek then her forehead, making her flinch. “Sweating.”

  “It’s nothing,” she lied in a strangled voice, and was both relieved and horrified that her phone began to ripple with the heavenly notes of a harp.

  It took two tries to open the call. When her sister appeared, she wasn’t in focus. Tears of homesickness and failure filled her eyes. “Gili.”

  “I know, bella,” she sounded equally anxious. “I can feel it. Where are you? Still at the Prince’s chalet?”

  “I don’t know.” The realization that she was in a strange land had been stalking her. Admitting it made it real and added to her terror. Her heart was so tight, she feared it was going into arrest. She clutched at the front of her shirt. “We’re driving. How will you find me if we’re moving? I’m so scared, Gili.”

  “I know, fillette. Breathe. Count your oranges. I’m coming. See, I’m going through the door. Henri has been tracking you all day. We’ll always find you, you know that. Are you still with the Prince?”

  Trella looked up and saw Xavier staring at her like her hair was made of snakes.

  It was the most humiliating moment of her life. She couldn’t make it worse by having her sister come to her like she was a child. Couldn’t.

  “No.” She turned back to her phone. “You’re married now. You have to stay with Kasim.”

  “He understands. I’ve already sent someone to tell him and prepare the helicopter.”

  It sounded so outlandish. What other person had family flying in from all corners to save her from imaginary threats?

  “No, Gili.” She managed to sound firm, even though turning away her sister felt like plunging a knife into her own chest. “I don’t want you to come. I mean it.”

  “Bella,” her sister breathed as though she’d felt the knife, too, in the back.

  “I have to learn, Gili. I have to. I’m going to hang up and I’ll call you later—”

  “Wait! Let me speak to the Prince. He needs to understand.”

  Since there was no way Trella could explain it herself, she pushed the phone toward him.

  “It’s a panic attack,” Gili said. “She doesn’t need drugs or a hospital or strangers making her relive why this is happening. She needs to feel safe. Is there a hotel where you can secure a room? I don’t mean book one. I mean secure it.”

  “We’ll be at the palace in ten minutes.”

  “Good. Get her into a quiet bedroom, keep the lights low, blinds down, guards at the door. She needs to let it run its course without fearing people are going to see her. Keep her warm and whatever she says, remind her she’s safe. If you can’t stay with her, I’ll come.”

  “I’ll stay with her.” His voice was grim. He handed back the phone.

  She ended the call, mortified by how needy her sister had made her sound. Appalled because it was true. She hadn’t tried to weather a spell on her own since they had first started. It had been a disaster.

  Nevertheless, she screwed up her courage, pressed the phone between her breasts, and spoke some of the hardest words that had ever passed her lips. “You don’t have to babysit me.”

  She held her breath, dreading the prospect of going it alone.

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight until that baby is born.”

  The harsh words jarred, taking her brief flash of gratitude and coating it in foreboding.

  CHAPTER SIX

  XAVIER HAD THE car drive to the postern gate, where delivery trucks and other utility vehicles came in. They took a lane through the back garden to the private apartments. It was a longer, slower, but much more discreet entrance into the palace built by a king three hundred years ago.

  Did coming in this way also allow him to avoid Mario and any mention of his grandmother’s expectation that he present himself? A man did what he had to for the mother of his unborn child.

  Xavier didn’t do emotion. Fits and tempers were signs of poor breeding. He’d been taught that from an early age. When women became histrionic, he offered space.

  Not possible today. And as much as he wanted to hold himself apart from the way Trella was behaving, he couldn’t. She was shaking, hair damp at her temples, eyes darting. When he helped her from the car, she clung to his sleeve and looked to every shadow.

  It was unnerving. Even stranger, her sense of threat put him on guard.

  He kept reminding himself this was a panic attack, something he knew very little about except that it was a false response. Nevertheless, her fear provoked a very real primal need in him to offer protection. His heart pounded with readiness and he scanned about as they moved, fingers twitching for a weapon. He’d never experienced such an atavistic, bloodthirsty reaction. He was not so far removed from his medieval ancestors as he had imagined. He was completely prepared to shed his cloak of civility and slay if necessary.

  Staff leapt to their feet as they walked through the kitchen. He said nothing, only pulled her into the service elevator.

  Gunter came with them, frowning as he saw how distraught she looked. “Are you in pain?” He tried to take her pulse.

  Trella shrank into Xavier.

  “Leave her alone.” He closed his arms around her. Her firm bump nudged low on his abdomen, reminding him that her panic attack was only the tip of the iceberg where this confounding day was concerned.

  His valet, Vincente, met them as they entered his apartment. Xavier had moved into his father’s half of the rooms when he’d finished university and never even glanced toward the adjoined feminine side, but it was kept dusted for the ghosts of past queens.

  He pressed Trella toward the canopied bed of gold and red then started to close the doors, telling Vincente, “I’m locking us in. Leave sandwiches in my lounge. If I need anything else, I’ll text. No one comes in here. No one.”

  “Of course, sir.” He read Vincente’s apprehension. “But I believe the Queen—”

  “Inform her I’ll be along when I can, but it will be some time.”

  Xavier did as he’d promised, movi
ng to lock each door and close all the drapes, turning on one bedside lamp as he went. Then he shook out a soft blanket from a chest and brought it to where Trella sat on the edge of the bed.

  She clutched the blanket around her, back hunched, still trembling.

  All he could see was a nine-year-old girl. Was this what that experience had left her with? He had a thousand questions, but heeded her sister’s advice and only said, “You’re safe, bella. This is my world. Nothing can harm you here.”

  Tears tracked her cheeks and she swiped the back of her hand along her jaw, skimming away the drips.

  “I didn’t want you to see me like this.” Her voice was thin as a silk thread. “I wanted you to think I was Gili. She cries at proper things, like weddings and stubbed toes. She’s afraid of real things, not stuff she makes up in her head.”

  Was it made-up? He used the satin on the corner of the blanket to dry her cheeks, not sure where the urge to comfort came from. It wasn’t taught or ingrained. Manners and platitudes got him through displays like this, not affection.

  But he felt responsible for her and her attack. “I only wanted to talk to you. I didn’t expect things to go off the rails like this.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. I take everything further than it needs to go.” She drew in a shaken sigh. Her eyes filled again.

  “Is this what you were hiding, staying out of the spotlight all those years?”

  She nodded jerkily. “It started after Papa died. We were fifteen. I was starting to feel like I might be able to go back to school and have a normal life. But we were seen as sex objects, I guess, because the most disgusting men found us online. I’d already been through an eating disorder and trolls mocking me for it. Then all these men started sending photos and telling me what they wanted to do to me. It hit a switch.”

  A streak of impotent fury lodged in his chest. His entire life, he had struggled against this particular irony. He was a future monarch, charged with great power and responsibility, godlike in some eyes, but he couldn’t control how people treated each other. He couldn’t prevent the kind of harm that had Trella drawing up her knees so she was a ball of misery. His inability to help her struck at the deepest part of him.