Alec's Royal Assignment (Man on a Mission 3)

Angelina closed her suddenly aching eyes and took several deep breaths, trying to calm the turmoil inside caused by her mother’s careless words.

“Still,” her mother continued, “with such an important job, as you are constantly telling us—so important you do not have time to find a husband and give us the grandchildren that would make our remaining years worthwhile—it should not have been too difficult to arrange. A word to the queen, perhaps, and we could have... But then, you do not mean to be so thoughtless, I know. Your father says it is all my fault, that I should have raised you better, that you do not think of the sacrifices we have made for you all these years. But I told him—”

Angelina clicked the delete button without waiting for her mother to finish. She didn’t need to hear the rest because it would be more of the same thing. On and on. The constant criticism. The “we do not mean to complain” complaints. Always managing to throw into any conversation Angelina’s lack of a husband. Lack of children. Never understanding the choices she’d made for her life. Her life. Not theirs.

As for asking the queen for an invitation for her parents, she should never have mentioned the queen’s friendship to them. It had slipped out one day in conversation, and she’d known it was a mistake almost immediately, but it was too late. How many times since then had she told her parents she would never presume on her friendship with the queen? Not even for them. But they’d refused to believe her. Refused to understand. They will never understand, she thought, a band of pain tightening around her heart. Just as they will never understand me.

She pushed those thoughts aside with an effort and went directly to her bedroom. She stripped off her clothes and left them in a little pile on the floor, but carefully hung her shoulder holster containing her SIG SAUER P320 on its designated hook inside her closet door for easy access. She’d been surprised her interrogators had allowed her to take her gun home with her, but they had, after they’d performed ballistics tests on it.

A hot shower beckoned. With the steaming-hot water streaming over her head, she could finally let herself cry. Cry the way she’d been wanting to cry since the moment she’d killed Sasha. Cry the way she hadn’t cried since she’d finally admitted she wasn’t going to be able to find her cousin, no matter how hard she tried.

She sagged against the tiles, the fingers of one hand splayed against the water-slick wall as sobs tore through her—her regret over taking a man’s life all mixed up with her remorse over Caterina, her inability to make her parents proud of her no matter how she tried and everything else she’d failed to do right in her life. She cried until the hot water turned lukewarm, until she cried herself out, and then wiped her eyes. She stepped tiredly from the shower and toweled herself off. She used a separate towel for her hair, rubbing it briskly until it was barely damp, then grabbed a comb off the small counter beside the washbasin and quickly combed her hair, forcing herself to look in the mirror.

She scarcely recognized the woman who stared back at her. Her eyes were red and swollen, her face puffy. She remembered the pride she’d felt earlier when Captain Zale had told her, “Good job, Lieutenant.” Proud. You were so proud, and now what? A proverb from the Bible came to her, one her mother had often quoted. Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

She’d been so proud she’d helped save the crown prince. So proud she hadn’t interrupted the christening in doing so. But now her pride was humbled. In ashes. The questions her interrogators had thrown at her made it very clear they’d suspected her—as if she’d killed Sasha to cover up her own involvement. Crazy as that idea was, it had made a kind of illogical sense to her when her interrogators had raised the possibility.

Even Captain Zale had not defended her, and that hurt most of all. Everything she’d done since joining the queen’s security detail, all the sacrifices she’d made, and no one stood up for her.

The doorbell rang, startling her from her sad reverie. Who could possibly be calling on her at this hour of the night? She’d already spent hours being thoroughly interrogated by Captain Zale and the heads of the other two security details. They’d finally let her go when they were convinced she had nothing more to tell them and the crime scene reconstruction and preliminary ballistics tests had corroborated her story that Sasha had shot the cameraman to cover up his involvement in the plot, and that she’d shot Sasha in self-defense.

Even if she were completely cleared of suspicion, as seemed likely, given the strong evidence, would she ever be trusted—really trusted—again? Or would they insist on believing a man would not have let down his guard? That a man would have acted differently in the same situation?