by Madison Faye
Martin was actually looking me in the eye this time instead of at my breasts, which had to mean something.
“Whoa, seriously?”
He nodded. “This is between you and me, but you get the right story on my desk, and good things are going to happen for you here.”
I frowned, looking away. Still not worth it. Still not giving up the insane, wild, passionate, whatever it was I had going on with the King brothers of Bellhaven.
“Thanks, Martin,” I finally said sincerely. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I was halfway back to my office when I heard the smug laugh. I turned to see Simone, standing in her office doorway with a wicked looking grin on her face, her arms crossed over her chest.
I obviously hadn’t seen Simone since the night of the Triple Crown Club, when she’d brought me those clothes. And I immediately felt terrible for not having called her.
“Hey! God, I’m so sorry I haven’t touched base with you.” I grinned as I stepped towards her. “I just got held up with this flu thing, and—”
“Your story is going to make me a name at this paper.”
I froze, the grin falling from my face. “Pardon?”
She laughed again, the sound grating and mean-sounding as her eyes narrowed.
“God, Emma, who knew you were such a slut?”
The color drained from my face.
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, three guys?”
Oh my God.
My heart froze for a second, a horrible sinking feeling dropping in my stomach.
“Are you shitting me?” I said quietly.
Simone smiled cruelly. “Was the necklace I gave you a hit?”
My jaw dropped, and my hand flew to the damned thing that I was still wearing.
“Microphones are so small these days.”
“You bitch!” I whirled, sucking in breaths of air and trying to think straight before I turned back to her.
“What did you hear?”
All she’d heard was me having a filthy night with three men. She didn’t know their names. They were safe from this.”
“We’ll I’m assuming you left the necklace on a bedside table at the royal palace at Bellhaven, because honey? I heard plenty.”
I wanted to sink through the floor. I wanted to disappear, right there.
“Why?” I asked quietly, my eyes searching hers.
“It’s just business. Nothing personal.”
She smiled.
“Well, maybe it’s a little personal in this case.”
“You can’t do this,” I whispered.
“I can, and I will. I’m going to Martin right now actually.”
I barely moved as she brushed past me — numb, cold, and frozen to the spot.
“Oh, and Emma?” Simone’s voice cut me from behind.
“Don’t worry, your little harem of royal princes already knows.”
I turned, and she smiled again.
“So sorry. I guess I didn’t know they weren’t aware that you were a reporter.” She made a tsking sound with her teeth. “They weren’t very happy about that.”
11
Joaquin
“What?”
I put the phone down, taking a slow breath as I looked around at my two brothers.
“She’s a reporter,” I repeated, my voice like gravel.
“And she made a tape?”
It hurt to even hear it, even if I was the one who’d just said it to them moments before.
I nodded, and Landon swore.
“Mother fucker.”
“What can you hear?” Malcolm growled from the corner of the room, tapping his fingertips together with a dark look on his face.
“Well, this other chick just called us, on my private fucking cell, which means you can hear names and you can probably hear me giving Emma my number the other day.”
Malcolm growled under his breath.
The reporter who called had been brief, but she’d told us everything. Emma Wright wasn’t an editor, and not at a publishing house like we’d been stupid enough to assume. She was an investigative journalist. That’s why she’d been there that night, for a fucking story.
…And we’d fallen for the whole fucking thing like suckers.
The truth hit hard, and cut deep. We’d fallen for the last girl we were expecting. We’d taken her in, we’d shown her who we were — who we really were. We’d told her we loved her.
She’d fucked us, and then she’d fucked us over.
12
Emma
I staggered out of the building in a daze, my whole world spinning as I tried to find balance.
I couldn’t breathe, and it felt like everything around me was crashing to the ground at once. Tears stung my eyes as I somehow made it across the street to the small park outside the Post building, and it was there that I sank onto a bench, dropping my face into my hands, and cried.
I cried harder than I had for a very long time
Because it wasn’t just Simone’s betrayal, or that my name was about to get dragged into the mud. Truth be told, in that moment, I didn’t even give a crap about any of that. I cried, and my heart broke though, because I’d hurt them. I’d wounded the three men I’d fallen completely in love with.
I’d gone into this whole thing looking for a story, with my only angle being my own career climb and swallowing back the bitterness of who I’d have to stab along the way to get there. But that’d been before I met the men of my damned dreams.
All three of them.
Somehow, in the most unlikely of places with the most unlikely people, I’d found something I’d never managed to actually find before: love.
And that’s the reason the tears burned down my cheeks. Not because of my shitty co-worker, or my own shame, or even my career. I cried because I knew I’d lost the love I’d just found, and that hurt the worst.
I curled into a ball on that couch, sobbing as the pain cut through me. Eventually, of course, that sadness turned to anger, and fury at being so used and fucked over by Simone. I squeezed my eyes shut tight, shaking my head and trying to swallow back the pure rage I felt at being stabbed in the back like that. My hand flew to my neck, and I screamed as I yanked the stupid fucking fake diamond necklace from my neck. I was about to hurl it across the park or toss it into a sewer drain, when suddenly, something stopped me.
“Microphones are so small these days.”
I froze, and slowly, I brought my pulled-back throwing arm down to my lap and opened my palm. My eyes glared at the little pendant, and again I felt like throwing it as far from me as I could, but again, I held back.
“Holy shit,” I gasped quietly to myself as the adrenaline rushed through me. I stood, my pulse hammering in my veins as my eyes darted around the park. I started running when I spotted what I was looking for, and I’m sure the poor hot-dog vendor thought I was insane, screaming for a hot dog with tear-stains on my face and this crazed look in my eyes. He probably thought I was a lunatic when I grabbed the foil-wrapped snack from his hands, unwrapped it, threw the actual food away, and then wrapped the foil around the gorgeous necklace in my hands.
My phone was out of my pocket and to my ear as I started running again.
He answered on the third ring.
“You’ve got some fucking nerve calling me,” Ryker growled into the phone.
“Before you hang up—”
“Jesus Christ, do you even have a heart inside that chest of yours?”
“Yes!” I screamed. “Look, I know you care about them, and—”
“Damn right I do, so I’m hanging up this fucking phone right—”
“I can fix this!”
Ryker paused, and I could almost hear him growling lowly through the phone.
“You haven’t hung up, which means you want to help.”
“Careful, sweetheart,” he grumbled.
“Look, you’re head of their security, right?”
“If you’re trying to pass th
is on to me, you are sorely goddamn mistaken—”
“Ryker!”
He grumbled into the phone.
“Do you have a security clean room at the castle? For scanning and pulling data off of surveillance electronics?”
There was a moment of silence before Ryker finally muttered a “yes.” The smile split across my face.
“Okay, I’m going to need to call in that offer of a ride then.”
He laughed bitterly.
“And just what the hell is your angle here?”
“No angle,” I said quietly. “I just want to make this right.”
I took a shaky breath, closing my eyes.
“I have to make this right, Ryker, because I love—”
“You might’ve broken them, you know,” he said quietly.
“I’m never going to let that happen.”
My voice was fierce, and powered by something I’d never felt before. And it took me a second to realize what that was: true love. It was naked, pure, unflinching love for these three men.
And no way was I going to let that get away.
“How soon can you fly to the helipad of the Revania Post?”
There was a moment of silence, and for a second, I was almost sure Ryker had written me off, until I heard his low, growly sigh.
“One hour,” he said lowly. “You better have a plan, sweetheart.”
“See you then,” I said quietly, ending the call.
My heart beat like a drum, and every single molecule in my body buzzed. I was scared to death of losing them, and of all of this going to shit, but I had one chance to make this right. I knew it was a long shot, but it was all I had left.
I know in the fairy tales the prince goes after the princess, not the other way around. But then, this was no fairy tale. This was my life. I’d fallen in love with these men, and nothing was going to break that or hurt them. Not if I had anything to say about it.
13
Malcolm
None of us heard it at first. The three of us were too lost in thought, camped out on the bumper of our dad’s old 1955 Chevy pickup. We’d spent two long summers rehabbing this thing with him until it was purring like a kitten. Now, we drove it when we wanted to think of him, or when we just needed to get away from the helicopters and limos and palaces.
We drove it out here, to the cliffs overlooking the water, when we needed to get out of our own fucking heads. Usually, it helped, but not that day. That day, I was pretty sure nothing was going to help. Nothing was going to fix this, or put the pieces back together. Not after we thought we’d found the girl of our dreams only to have her step on our hearts.
The three of us were so lost in thoughts, and in our own pissed-off fury, that we didn’t hear our helicopter until it was practically on top of us. We glanced up, frowning in confusion as to why Ryker would just drop in like this. That is, until we saw who was with him.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Joaquin growled, standing and curling his hand into a fist.
The chopper set down about a hundred feet away from us, the engine winding down as the blades slowed. The side door popped open, and then there she was, bolting right for us.
And damn if my heart didn’t just jump up in my chest. I was so fucking mad at her, and I wanted to hate her so damn much for what she’d done to us and what she was going to do to us with whatever she wrote. But the heart knows what it wants, and I could be mad all I want, but something inside me still fucking soared when I saw her.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Landon muttered, jangling the truck keys, grabbing Joaquin and my shoulders, and nodding to the truck.
“Please!” she was screaming, tears running down her face as she ran to us. “Please just listen.”
“To what!” I growled. I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut so hard it hurt. “Fuck, Emma, I want to listen to you but how the hell can we trust you? About fucking anything?”
“Because I’m going to tell you the truth. All of it.”
“I think we know the truth now,” Joaquin said bitterly, looking away.
“Not the real one,” she whispered. “Look, you’re right. I came to the club that night looking for a story, or something. But you knew that the minute you met me. You knew I didn’t belong, and that I’d snuck my way in. And you could’ve kicked me out yourselves, but you’d didn’t.” She swallowed thickly. “Why?”
“Why?” I hissed, shaking my head. “The ‘why’ is because we fell for you, Emma! You hooked us in and—”
“I never hooked you,” she spat back. “Yes, I went there for a story, but I never expected you three. There was no ‘angle’ in us meeting, and I sure as hell wasn’t using you for anything!”
“Oh, except to secretly record us so you could write a fucking newspaper story about us?” Landon spat back, venom in his voice.
“That wasn’t me.”
My eyes narrowed at her. “What?”
“It wasn’t me, and that’s the truth. A co-worker—” She swallowed. “This backstabbing bitch I work with hijacked my story and gave me a secret microphone I didn’t know about.”
I laughed bitterly, turning away.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said quietly to my brothers.
“Hold the fuck up.”
We whirled quickly at the sound of Ryker’s voice, glancing past a crying, shaking Emma to see him striding from the helicopter.
“You,” I glared at him, jabbing a finger at him. “We gotta have a serious talk about loyalties, man.”
He rolled his eyes. “Calm down, hot-head. She’s not wrong.”
My eyes jerked up in surprise. “What?”
“She ain’t wrong. We ran a diagnostic of her necklace back at the security center at the palace. It’s all there, secret mic and transmitter and all.”
Landon laughed darkly. “Well great, we have proof that she recorded us, just like we knew already.”
“She’s not lying about not knowing about it though.” Ryker shrugged.
“And how exactly do you expect us to believe—”
“He polygraphed me.”
The grin came to my lips before I could stop it, and I arched a brow at our head of security.
“You put a lie detector on her?”
“Yup.”
I turned back to Emma to see her holding my gaze unflinchingly, her eyes fierce.
Damn.
There was no way I could hold onto whatever anger I had, not with her. Not with that defiant, fierce, fiery passion she had behind her eyes.
“I didn’t know,” she said evenly, looking at each of us in turn.
None of us said a thing, but you could practically see the anger fizzling away.
“There’s still your paper,” Joaquin finally said, his voice tight. “When that story breaks, we’re going to be fucked.”
Slowly, Emma just grinned.
“I’m glad you find that amusing,” Landon hissed. “But—”
“I haven’t even gotten to the best part,” she said quietly with a big smile.
“Spell it out for me,” I muttered.
“They can’t run the story.” Emma’s voice cut the air, her eyes moving to all of us. “For one, recording someone without telling them and without some sort of legal wiretap or surveillance is illegal, in basically all of the kingdoms.”
I arched my brow, the smile teasing my lips as I met her eyes. “I’m impressed.”
Emma grinned widely. “Oh, I haven’t even gotten to the real good part yet.”
And that’s when she dropped the bomb on us.
See, a hidden recording device like the one her coworker Simone slipped her is a couple of pay-grades above what most newspapers would be working with. Actually, when Ryker and his team cracked that fucker open and started poking around, they’d opened up the real bombshell: the hidden recorder was property of the Bellhaven counter-terrorism division.
The bug that’d recorded us to ruin us was from our damn country.
Ryker isn’t a man to leave ends untied either, and it’d taken him all of twenty minutes to get in touch with the head of our security unit, match the serial number of the bug to the master equipment manifest, and figure out exactly who’d signed it out for use in the field. The time and supply location CCTV cameras had been back-checked, and low and fucking behold, guess who’d checked out a spy mic in order to try and ruin the three princes of Bellhaven?
Three members of our own fucking council. The same council that’d spent more of a year so far not being able to pick one of us to run the country.
“Oh, and that microphone has built in storage in addition to a transmitter.” Ryker slowly grinned a wicked smile. “And those morons had the thing on the whole fucking time before her shitty coworker even gave it to her. The three councilmen offering Simone a bunch of money to get her coworker to bug the Club, and promises of more money if she could help bring you three down.”
He chuckled.
“We in the security business like to call that ‘conspiracy and treason.’ We’ve got all of it on tape back at the palace, and I’ve taken the liberty of bringing your legal team into the mix.”
Emma cleared her throat. “Oh, and we’ve also got Simone fucking my boss, Martin, in order to get a raise and a title bump that I was up for.”
I whistled lowly, shaking my head and taking this all in.
“Thank you, Ryker,” I finally said quietly, nodding solemnly at him. “Honestly, thank you, for everything.”
He just grinned.
“It’s what I do, Your Highness.”
“Ryk, could you give us a—”
“Say no more,” he chuckled at Landon. “I assume you’ve got enough gas to get your own asses back to the palace in that thing?” He nodded at the pickup, and my brother nodded.
“Well, that’ll be all from me then.” He turned and nodded at Emma.
“Remember what I said, sweetheart.”
Emma grinned as she hugged him. “You know I will.”