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You keep making mistake after mistake. You should have gone yourself.
He should have, but he hadn’t. Everything about getting Leo had had to be discreet. He couldn’t have risked being seen in some down-at-heel street in London, not when the British press were so ruthless. The risk of discovery had been too great. Kostas would have been even more suspicious if Galen had disappeared only to return with a child, and even when the story had come out, he’d asked some difficult questions.
‘My staff were under strict instructions,’ he said. ‘They weren’t to coerce you in any way, and they were also to ensure that you’d feel welcome coming to Kalithera.’
‘Oh, they explained. They were very clear. But like I said, I was in shock. I couldn’t think and they were...impatient.’
Yes, they probably had been. He’d told them not to linger.
‘We tried to contact you,’ he said, because he had. ‘But your phone number was disconnected, and your flat was empty. We had no way of finding out where you were. And I assumed...’ He wasn’t proud of this, he wasn’t proud at all, but she deserved his honesty in return for her own. ‘I assumed you’d taken the money and fled.’
Twin spots of brilliant colour burned in her pale cheeks. It was clear whatever confession she was going to make to him, it was going to cost her. ‘No, I didn’t. My phone died and I couldn’t afford another, and I couldn’t afford to stay in my flat either. I had postnatal depression and couldn’t work.’
Yet more shock hit him. ‘But the money—’
‘You think I’d ever touch that money?’ There was ferocity in her gaze now, a burning fury. ‘No. That was blood money, and I didn’t want a penny of it.’
You have made a complete and utter mess of this. As expected.
Galen had always hated the strict rules his father had imposed on him as a boy, rules that, no matter how hard he tried, seemed to have been set up precisely so he could fail them. To be good, obey his tutors, be polite and pleasant. Never allow his emotions or his own personal wants and needs to rule him.
Simple rules and yet always there had been something he did that was wrong. He’d laughed when he shouldn’t, used the wrong title, run when he should have walked... Small things that his father had treated as huge failures. In the end he’d decided that there was no point in trying when nothing he did was right anyway, and so he’d let his anger at his father consume him.
Then Alexandros had died, and, to protect his country, Galen had had to take the throne, a throne that might not be his. And he’d found himself having to try yet again, to overcome the reputation he’d earned in England, to be the perfect King so no one would ever question his claim. And he’d thought, after ten years of solid rule, that finally he’d laid the ghost of his father to rest. That he might even deserve the throne he sat on...
But you don’t, do you?
The thought sat in his head, searing him. In the space of a little over a year, not only had he compromised the integrity of his crown, he’d torn his son from his mother and left her with nothing. She had been done a terrible wrong and he was the cause, and, while her blackmail attempt had also been wrong, he knew what lengths a parent would go to for their child. He couldn’t hold that against her.
His own guilt at his role in this was a knife blade. He had to make this right somehow. Yet at the same time, he couldn’t put at risk the secret he had to keep.
She couldn’t be acknowledged as Leo’s mother, not given the story that had already been disseminated about how she’d died in childbirth. If it was found out that, not only was she alive, but also that the palace had lied, well... That would be an opportunity his uncle wouldn’t let sit. Kostas would parade the decade-old scandal of that party in London Galen been discovered at, evidence that Galen hadn’t been a fit choice of heir. Then he’d no doubt stir up trouble with the old rumours about Galen’s mother and the affair she was reputed to have had, causing questions about Galen’s parentage and whether he was indeed Alexandros’s son...
No, he couldn’t allow that, not for his country’s sake and not for Leo’s.
Uncrossing his arms, he put his hands on the edge of the desk, leaning on them. ‘Then what is it that you want, Solace? I apologise for the way you’ve been treated. None of what happened to you was my intention, and I’ll do everything I can to make it up to you. However...’ He paused, because on this he would not be moved, no matter what she said. ‘I’ll not allow my son to be taken out of Kalithera. He is my heir therefore he stays with me, understand?’
‘Yes, I understand.’ Her back was very straight, and she didn’t look away. ‘Then I’ll stay here with him.’
‘And how do you envisage that working? You cannot be acknowledged as his mother, not since everyone thinks his mother is dead.’
‘That’s not my problem.’ There was steel in her voice. ‘Youtook my baby away.Youtold the world his mother was dead. I had no choice in any of this, which makes it your issue to deal with, not mine.’
Galen was conscious of that heat building inside him again, the competitor responding to the challenge she’d just laid down, and it was a challenge, whether she knew it or not.
She might have seemed fragile and pale sitting there in her virginal white dress, but her silver eyes were hard and there was nothing but defiance in the tilt of her chin.
A proud, regal woman. A woman who’d been fighting for everything her entire life and now she was fighting for this, for her child.
Theirchild.
He couldn’t imagine the childhood she’d had, with no stability anywhere, not even in her bloodline. It was the opposite of his, where he’d been told from birth who he was and who he’d eventually be. Yet he wasn’t a stranger to instability, not when he didn’t even know if the throne he sat on was truly his, or even if Alexandros was actually his father.
Not that he could tell a soul about that. It was his secret to bear.
Anyway, what was important now was deciding what to do with her, not getting curious about her, and the simplest thing would be to have her flown back to London and out of his hair. Yet...
He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Sending her away would hurt her and he’d already hurt her enough as it was. The right thing to do would be to find a way for her to stay in Kalithera and allow her access to Leo.
