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“Now we come down to the real truth of it,” Javier said. “Do you have concerns about what you consider to be my state of distraction?”
“Not too many. But you must remember that we have a mission here. A goal.”
“I am very conscious of it. In service of that goal, she might have been a better queen than anyone else you could choose.”
“She will do well in her position as your wife. As for me... I will keep looking.”
“You will never be him,” Javier said, looking at his brother’s profile. “Don’t ever doubt that.”
“I doubt it often,” Matteo said. “But isn’t that what we must do? Question ourselves at every turn. I often wonder how I can ever be truly confident in anything I believe in. Because once I believed in him wholeheartedly. Once I thought that he had the nation’s best interests at heart. Once I thought our father was the hero. And it turned out that he was only the villain.”
Matteo gave voice to every demon that had ever lurked inside of Javier. When you had believed so wrongly, how could you ever trust that what you believed now was correct?
“We have to remember. An allegiance to honor before all else. Because if you can memorize a code, then you can know with your head what is right. Hearts lie.”
Javier nodded slowly. “Yes. You know I believe that as well as you do.”
“Good.”
He turned around and looked through the window, saw Violet now standing in the center of a group talking and laughing.
“It’s made easier by the fact that I have no feelings.” He shot his brother a forced grin.
“Good.”
Matteo turned and walked back into the party, leaving Javier standing there looking inside. Whether he had meant to or not, his brother had reminded him of what truly mattered. Not the heat that existed between himself and Violet. But progressing their country. Righting the wrongs of their father.
Javier had his own debt to pay his country. He had, under the orders of his father, used the military against its people. Had arrested innocent men who had spent time in prison, away from their families.
Who he knew his father had tortured.
He had been a weapon in the hands of the wrong man, with the wrong view on the world.
He was dangerous, and he couldn’t afford to forget it.
Nor could he afford to do any more than atone for all that he’d been.
Nothing, nothing at all, must distract him from that mission.
Not even his fiancée.
* * *
“Someone else can go with me.”
Violet was becoming irritated by the stormy countenance of her fiancé. He was driving the car carrying them down to town, wearing a white shirt and dark pants, the sleeves pushed up past his forearms. His black hair was disheveled. Possibly because earlier today they had begun kissing in his office, and she had ended up on his lap, riding the ridge of his arousal, gasping with pleasure until she realized that she was going to be late for her appointment at the bridal store in town.
“No,” he said.
“You’re not allowed to see the wedding dress that I choose anyway.”
“It doesn’t matter. I will wait outside.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she said. “If you’re going to go wedding dress shopping with me, you have to at least look a little bit like you don’t want to die.”
A mischievous thought entered her brain, and she set her fingers on his thigh, then let them drift over to an even harder part of him. “Are you frustrated because we didn’t get to finish?”
