King's Ransom (Man on a Mission 2)

But Andre Alexei couldn’t let it go. Recovering the ransom was secondary, he’d told his wife. Someone was going to pay in blood for everything she’d gone through. Someone was going to pay in blood for every scar she bore, every nightmare that still haunted her. Someone was going to pay in blood for the humiliation and helplessness he’d suffered knowing his wife—the woman he loved—had been raped and tortured, and there hadn’t been a thing he could do to prevent it. And now that the opportunity had finally presented itself, he was damned if he’d turn the other cheek.

His fatal flaw, she realized. The first king of Zakhar had carried that anger inside him for years. Not white-hot, but simmering below the surface. A powerful anger born of a powerful love. And because he couldn’t forgive, because his thirst for vengeance had finally overpowered him, he’d died, and Eleonora had died, too. Would he have done it if he’d known? she wondered. If he’d known Eleonora would choose him, would choose death with him over life without him, would he have risked his own life merely for vengeance?

There was no way to know for sure, but she wanted to believe he wouldn’t have done it. Wanted to believe his love was strong enough to put Eleonora’s life above his own needs, the way he’d done years before when he ransomed her.

Her thoughts moved to Andre. Her Andre. And he was her Andre, she recognized with a shock. Maybe he hadn’t been hers eleven years ago, but he was now. For the time being anyway. Maybe he didn’t love her the way she loved him. Maybe he didn’t love her the way Andre Alexei had loved Eleonora. But he loved her now. Needed her now. Maybe not forever and a day. But enough. Enough for now. And on that thought she went in search of him.

Juliana finally ran Andre to ground, after much searching, in the official royal office suite that had once been his father’s. She remembered his father as a stern, unsmiling man, who tolerated her friendship with Princess Mara merely because he barely tolerated Mara herself, and cared little for anything to do with Mara’s life. It was different with Andre. All the then-king’s hopes and dreams were tied up in his heir, and he begrudged anything that took Andre’s attention away from learning the business of running the country. Zakhar first and foremost had been his credo, and Andre’s father had demanded his son’s attendance at nearly every official function.

The old king had bitterly resented any attention Andre had paid to Mara, too, not just to Juliana. Mara had never said anything, and neither had Andre. But Juliana had known. She’d contrasted her own father’s loving treatment of her with the way Mara’s father had brushed his daughter aside, time and again. She’d compared her own father’s interest in the minutiae of her admittedly less than stellar school accomplishments with the complete indifference Mara’s father had shown toward Mara’s outstanding academic achievements and her brilliance in mathematics, and had pitied her friend.

She remembered now that Andre had never knuckled under to his father, not regarding Mara or anything else. Mara had told her once that Andre was stronger than anyone who went against him, and not just physically. The old king had ranted and raved against it, but Andre had insisted on serving the requisite four years with the Zakharian National Forces demanded of every other Zakharian male—and had done so.

He’d even voluntarily served an additional year when his unit had been called upon to go to Afghanistan on behalf of the United Nations, she remembered. She hadn’t known it at the time, but she’d read about it when he ascended the throne—the tabloids had been full of stories about him and his exploits, and she hadn’t been able to resist reading everything written about him.

The old king had also ruthlessly tried to separate Andre from Mara—and failed. Juliana had watched as Andre had quietly, but insistently, done his best to fill the void in Mara’s life, and if she hadn’t already loved him she would have loved him for that alone—for his tender, loving attitude toward his younger sister, for the protective shield he threw around her. The same way he’d treated Juliana, until...

And Mara had adored Andre. Wasn’t that why Juliana had broken off her friendship with Mara, rather than disillusion her friend about her beloved brother? Because she couldn’t bear the hero worship in Mara’s voice when she talked about Andre? Because she’d wanted to scream the truth about him the last time they’d spoken on the phone...but couldn’t hurt Mara that way? Couldn’t destroy the only loving influence in Mara’s life? Better to let her friend think Juliana no longer cared. Better to let Mara think Juliana didn’t need her friendship anymore. Anything except tell Mara what Andre had done when he’d repudiated any relationship with Juliana.