The Prodigal Prince's Seduction (Castaldini Crown 2)

The king struggled to sit up in bed, reached a trembling hand to her. “No, Gaby. He loves you so much he’d give his life for you. He wouldn’t blame you for abiding by the promise I made you give me. But I can’t tell him of our relationship and neither can you.”

“But this is ridiculous. It’s bound to come out sooner or later, and then what would you have me say? Oops, I forgot to tell you, your father was my family’s benefactor?”

“It’s imperative that Durante never find out.”

“Why?” she cried out in confusion.

The king seemed to age another twenty years before her eyes. Then he finally slumped back in bed and whispered, “Because if he finds out, he’ll put two and two together and realize that my mistress, the only woman I ever loved, was your mother.”

The world receded, her vision narrowed. Cold flooded in on her from all sides. Her heart lost momentum, stuttered, stalled.

The king’s voice became distorted. “I wanted to take our secret to my grave as she did. We never wanted you of all people to find out. But I have to tell you now.”

She felt her heart bleeding. “Not true…Mom loved Dad…”

“She did, but it was nothing like the love she had for me or I for her. She met him in my court, married him years after I left her in heartache and misery. It was almost as soon as she had you that your father’s depression began to manifest. Then I found proof that my suspicions—which had led me to break both of our hearts—had been unfounded. I sought her out, begged her forgiveness for the way I’d treated her. When I offered them my support, it felt as if your father suddenly let go with me around to carry the burden. She’d suffered so much, I had to offer her solace and then it was beyond us not to succumb to our love. Your father wasn’t there by then, either mentally or emotionally, to notice let alone care.

“We kept our relationship a secret so that we wouldn’t hurt our children, but we were deeply in love and perfectly happy. Then she started to suffer from her rheumatoid arthritis and I started to let go of my own life and duties as I suffered her suffering. She chose to die without me around to witness it. Getting the news of her death, knowing that I wasn’t there for her in her last days, was almost a deathblow. I held on until I attended her funeral, made sure that everything was in order with her legacy and with you before I broke down. The only reason I’m still hanging on now is, I need to hand over Castaldini to a new king.

“I always wished Durante would be that king. But the laws were against it. Then he came to despise me so much he wouldn’t have accepted becoming my crown prince even if the laws changed. Then everything changed after your mother died, after I almost did. After Leandro turned down the crown, I had my chance to finally change the laws, to make Durante eligible despite his being my son. But the hard part was getting Durante himself back here. That’s when it finally came to me—the one thing that could bring him back, to me, to himself. You.”

“How did you know that?” she wailed. “God…why me?”

“Because, although I risked exposing everything by bringing you together, I had to try to give you what I and your mother could have had if I hadn’t spoiled it for us. I sent you to him because you’re so like your mother and he’s so like me, I was certain you’d fall as madly in love as we had. And you did.”

Durante stared down at the report in his hand.

He’d been trying to put the past into its inaccessible corner, never to touch the present or future again.

He hadn’t expected to end his own world.

His knees gave way under the enormity of the conspiracy the cold data spun.

“Durante!”

Durante heard the booming voice, the powerful footsteps’ escalating tempo as if through a separate consciousness. It felt as if it were another’s body that was dragged to its feet, that stumbled backward to hit something soft and yielding that broke its falling momentum.

“Durante, what’s wrong?”

He stared up out of eyes that felt alien, at a stranger with concern and anxiety blazing on his face. Somewhere in the black cascade that eclipsed everything, he knew this was Leandro, his cousin. But was he really? Did he know who anybody was anymore? Hadn’t it all turned into one big, convoluted lie?

“Did something happen? Is Gabrielle all right? The king?”

“Something happened. Gabrielle. The king.” Durante heard the stifled echo droning in a monstrous parody of his voice.

“What is it, Durante? Tell me.”

Durante wanted to tell him. He felt sure that uttering the words would finish him. And he wanted it all to be over. But his mind and tongue had lost their connection.

Leandro sat down slowly, as if afraid any sudden movement would make him crumble. He pried free something Durante was crushing in his fist. The report. The end of his world.

Every nerve in his body snapped. He fell back like a skyscraper coming apart in an earthquake.

Numbness crept over him like an army of spiders as Leandro looked at the papers. Nothingness expanded in his skull until he thought he felt the lines connecting its bones separate, widen, as if in preparation for explosion.

He pushed back against the inexorable pressure. “Read it. Out loud. From the beginning.”

Leandro gave a grudging nod and began to read.

“Investigations reveal that when King Benedetto was newly crowned, he had a secret lover, Clarisse LeFevre, a French-Canadian ballerina in an Italian ballet company that frequently performed in Castaldini. He broke off the affair over reports that she was cheating on him with a business rival, and almost immediately married Countess Angelica Boccanegra. Ten years later, the king, after investigating and proving the falseness of the allegations that had caused him to cast away his lover, finally located her. She was now married, but he became a constant presence in her family’s life, supporting them all after her husband, Andrew Williamson, suffered bankruptcy and depression. He had them all relocated to Cagliari, where he also kept a private home, where it was revealed after intensive investigation that he met with her regularly and in utmost secrecy a few months before her death seven months ago.”

“And a month later he had his stroke.” Durante heard the whisper, didn’t recognize it as his voice. “He weathered my mother’s death without a tear, but almost died when his lover did. The lover he named his own daughter after. The daughter of the woman he was betraying, the woman he broke in mind and spirit. And that lover’s daughter is now my bride-to-be. The love of my life.”