Riled (The Invincibles 4)

I’d lost track of why he and I were together in the first place—because the Queen had engaged his services to protect me.

Once those services were no longer needed, what would happen between him and me?

The fact that he offered me no reassurances meant one of two things. He was either unaware of how I was feeling—which seemed hard to believe based on experience—or he knew my doubts and had nothing to quell them with.

22

Rile

I made every attempt to make our departure from the Seychelles as swift and easy as possible, without dwelling on the fact that we were cutting our trip short, particularly given we were only leaving two days earlier than planned. However, Kensington’s mood as well as that of the rest of those who traveled with us was somber.

She did her best to hide her true feelings, but reading her like I was able to, I knew it wasn’t just disappointment she was experiencing. She was worried, even fearful. She had every right to be.

Kensington knew as well as I did that there was more to what happened with Konstantine than sexual assault. He’d said that by the next night, he planned for them to be married. Showing up at King Ferdinand’s palace had only reinforced the level of his obsession. While I didn’t know exactly what role Otto played in all of this, my instincts told me it was significant.

Arranging where we’d meet was complex, and as it involved me asking a personal favor, it was something I had to do myself. The only people who could help me were my parents, and I had every intention of enlisting their aid.

I still believed Mallorca was the safest place for Kensington, and while I didn’t question Angel’s or Casper’s abilities, I intended to keep Ink and Crash on her detail as well. Smoke and Siren would travel with me.

It took a full week after we arrived back in Mallorca to make all the arrangements for my meeting with not just Otto von Habsburg but his parents, Frederick and Wilhelmina, along with Konstantine and his father and mother, Karl and Maria.

Frederick and Karl were brothers. Otto was the eldest son of Frederick; Konstantine was Karl’s. Decker dug deep into the Habsburg family, but found nothing that would indicate anything out of the ordinary in terms of the two sons’ inheritance or that of their fathers.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that was the key, but without Decker finding proof, I had nothing to go on.

The history of the Habsburgs was long and complicated, dating back to the 1020’s construction of the castle from which they derived their name and which still stood in what was now Switzerland.

Between 1438 and 1765, the throne of the Holy Roman Empire was continuously occupied by the House of Habsburg. The family was able to vastly expand its domains to include Burgundy, Spain, and its colonial empire, Bohemia, Hungary, and other territories through a series of dynastic marriages.

As with most powerful empires, the house was eventually dissolved in 1806 due to an extinction in the male line. However, when a female descendant married into the House of Lorraine, that empire was soon renamed the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. The male heir from that union, dropped the lesser-known Lorraine and reverted the dynasty’s name back to Habsburg. That branch of the family had ruled Austria until World War I.

Financially ruined, facing the threat of extinction in the male line a second time due to deaths in war and by illness, and powerful enemies in World War II, little was heard about the family to this day.

As Decker had said, the amount of inbreeding in order to keep their line “pure,” had resulted in the opposite. I had no doubt there was some level of madness, perhaps evidence in each of the family members.

Even if I could get them to confess nothing, by having the six individuals who’d represented the once-powerful House of Habsburg in one room, I felt certain I could get enough information to know my next step.

The night before I was scheduled to leave Mallorca to travel first to Madrid and then on to London, I waited until I was certain Kensington was asleep before leaving the bed we shared to go to Celestina’s gravesite. It had been so long since I felt her presence, and that troubled me. I hadn’t seen her from a distance, but when I got closer to the small cemetery, I saw Marta placing a bouquet of flowers next to the headstone.

“I thought I might find you here tonight,” I said as I approached and put my arm around her trembling shoulders.

“Today would have been her thirty-third birthday.”

“Yes,” I murmured. I hadn’t forgotten, and never would. Marta had understood when I chose to only list the year of her daughter’s birth and death on the marker since the day she was born and the day she died were the same, only twenty-six years apart.

We stood together silently for some time. Eventually, Marta left me alone. I sat on the cold grass and put my hand on the etched granite.

“Happy birthday, my love. I miss you so.” I listened to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, closed my eyes, and focused on how the breeze felt on my face.

It had been less than three months since I whisked Kensington away from the States, first to Mallorca, and then Madrid, and finally to the Seychelles. In that time, I had grown to care a great deal for her. She was beautiful and intriguing. Making love with her was better than it had been with anyone else ever, including my beloved Celestina. But I wondered, once this was all over, when Kensington was free to return to her home, live her life without a constant threat, would the magic I felt between us remain?

That the woman I’d married would’ve been thirty-three years old today, was a harsh reminder of Kensington’s youth. In January, she had turned twenty-seven. In November, I had turned thirty-seven.

There were more than years between us; there were life experiences too innumerable to reflect on. It wasn’t just losing my wife and unborn child that had aged me; the years of dangerous missions and the stress that went along with the life of an MI6 agent, compounded the wear on my body and my mind.

It was hard to admit, even to myself, that one of the reasons I left Her Majesty’s Service and ventured out to form the Invincibles was that I was feeling the weight of my years.

The final straw for me had been the London subway and bus bombings. Witnessing the carnage the terrorists caused that day had been the impetus under which I contacted Decker and made him a partnership offer, followed by making the same one to Edge and Grinder.