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CHAPTER TEN
THIRTYYEARSAFTERescaping it in the middle of the night, His Serene Grace the Archduke Felipe Skander Cairo of Santa Domini walked back into the Royal Palace that his family had held for generations.
It had been remarkably easy to retrace his family’s steps. Up into the mountains and over the border, then down through the farthest villages, making his way through the very heart of the alpine kingdom he had been born to protect.
And with every step, he knew. That this was right. That this was home. That even if what was left of the general’s military executed him the moment he set foot in the palace, this was where he belonged.
In his country, with his people, taking back what was his so that no child of his blood would be forced to live as he had done all these miserable years.
The white-covered mountains were deep in his bones. The green hills, the crystal-blue lakes—they pumped in his blood. They made him who he was.
By the time he reached the palace gates, he had attracted followers and the inevitable press. But he didn’t stop to read headlines or gauge public sentiment.
He didn’t care what the papers said. This was right. Finally, he was doing what was right.
Ricardo stood proud at his side. Hundreds of loyalists stood at his back. The police had met them outside the capital city, but rather than arresting them all, had only escorted the procession along their route toward the palace.
“You are a movement, Sire,” Ricardo told him.
Cairo knew better. He was a man. He was a mediocre husband and he was already well on his way to being a terrible father. He was famous for all the wrong reasons and he’d squandered the better part of his life in fear.
But none of that mattered, because one woman had looked straight into the monster in him and seen only the king.
Today, at long last, he would claim that crown.
He walked through the palace gates that the general’s remaining cronies didn’t dare close against the rightful heir to the Santa Domini throne. Not when he had made this so public. He climbed the ceremonial steps, as aware of the news helicopters buzzing overhead as he was of the brave men and women who walked with him, ushering him toward his uncertain future.
But he would walk to meet it with his head held high. As his father would have wanted him to do, he knew without question.
He hadn’t been in the palace since he was five years old, but Cairo knew his way. He marched past the ancient canvases that depicted his ancestors, the frescoes and the marbled halls, to the grand throne room that he knew full well had not been used since his father had last sat there thirty years ago.
That was where they met him, a pack of fat, old men with soft hands and shifty-eyed guards.
Cairo did not wait for them to speak.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said, stopping halfway across the polished floors and standing there beneath the statue of his grandfather, aware that there were cameras on him, as there were always cameras on him. Today he was grateful for it.
And he was aware that no matter what happened here, he would be remembered for this moment above all others in his life.
Better make it good.
“I am Cairo, the last of the Santa Dominis. I believe you have been waiting to execute me for the crime of possessing my father’s blood for the past thirty years.” He inclined his head, though his eyes glittered and he felt his rage inside him like a drum. “Here I am. Do with me as you will.”
* * *
Brittany watched the dramatic reclamation of the Santa Domini throne with the rest of the dumbstruck world—on television, hidden away in a safe house in one of Cairo’s lesser known properties in the remote Scottish highlands.
It had been part of the bargain they’d struck when Cairo told her what he planned to do, and what he needed her to do if he did not live through it.
It hadn’t been lost on her that Cairo had not expected to survive. But it was one more thing she couldn’t allow herself to examine too closely.
She and a Hollywood actor as well known for his collection of children by assorted famous mothers as for any actual acting waited out the march into Santa Domini together in the drafty old manor house. Meaning she had watched it live on the twenty-four-hour news channel in the cozy den while the blandly attractive, deeply boring man in question had done push-ups in the gallery and spent several hours on his mobile phone shouting at his agent.
“You don’t have to stay any longer,” she’d told him after Cairo walked into the palace. When the remaining ministers resigned on the spot and the bells of all the Santa Domini churches began to ring out across the land after lying dormant for thirty years.
Long Live the King!the news sites and the people cheered.
As if Cairo had never been scandalous in all his life.
