The Prodigal Prince's Seduction (Castaldini Crown 2)

Stop it. This had gone on long enough. It ended now.

“Durante…I need to tell you something.”

“What a coincidence. I have something to tell you, too.”

His voice. She’d never heard his voice like that. Emotionless. Lifeless. He looked as if he’d been crying, too, his eyes shards of brilliant blue simmering in angry redness.

She clutched at him, her heart bucking its tethers. “Durante, what is it? God…are you okay?”

“I will be.”

Then he turned and walked away. She rushed in his wake, a fireball of fear and confusion exploding in her mind.

The king was waiting for them at his reading table, the first time she’d seen him out of bed. His face started to tug into that skewed smile. It fell back into bleakness at the sight of Durante.

Silence settled over the scene. Something terrible radiated from Durante. She stumbled sideways as if out of the path of a lethal ray.

He couldn’t already know. She had to be the one to tell him.

But he looked…rabid. He…he did know. Was incensed. But not at her. It couldn’t be at her.

“You wish me to become your crown prince.” The hiss that emanated from him sounded inhuman. Shudders started to creep over her. “What do they say about being careful what you wish for? You manipulated me to get me back here only for me to find out your secrets, crimes that I will expose. I’ll tell the world what a sadistic, adulterous husband you were. And I will take the crown now, not after you die.”

Gabrielle’s heart had stopped with the first salvo out of Durante’s lips. Now it beat like the wings of a hummingbird, yet pushed no blood to her brain. The world constricted into a pinpoint of darkness.

Something wrenched her from the edge of oblivion. Durante was dragging her away.

He was so angry at his father. She had to defuse his shock and agony. Had to mend this horrific breach.

“Durante…don’t do this to yourself…it’s not like you think…” His abrupt stop had her crashing into him. She leaned on him, for support, for both of them, her lips trembling into his heaving back, with love, with desperation to explain before one more minute passed. “Your father’s only crime was loving my mother, hiding their affair, from everyone, starting with me, but he did it so that he wouldn’t hurt anyone…he loves you…but was so afraid you hated him, made me promise…”

He wrenched away, turned on her. “You were congratulating yourself, weren’t you? As each phase of your seduction worked on me like a spell?”

Seduction? Spell? What did he…?

“Now you’ve reached the point where you believe your hold on me is unbreakable, that I’d sooner let go of all my pride and fortune, of my very life, than let you go, don’t you?”

He-he believed…the worst? Again? He didn’t trust her? Didn’t think she deserved a chance to defend herself?

“And you were right.”

Wha…? She’d misunderstood? He wasn’t saying that he doubted her?

“I would give my life for you, the woman, the treasure who shares my soul and mind, the owner of my body and heart.”

He wasn’t! He didn’t doubt her. Her churning world stilled, quaked with relief. “Oh, God, Durante, oh, my love…”

“But that’s not you.” His hiss froze her jubilation. “That woman was a role you played to seduce me, reading the lines my father taught you. That woman doesn’t exist. So now, my bride-to-be—you’re no longer my bride-to-be. I cancelled the wedding. I’ll tell the whole world why. I’ll show anyone who had any doubt about you how the worst so-called rumors were only the tip of the iceberg. I’m cancelling the book deal, too, and if you try to play any of the penalty clauses, I’ll crush you and your precious company under my foot.” He gave a hideous laugh. “Oh, wait, I’ll crush you and everything you hold dear, anyway.”

A stranger. She was looking at a vicious stranger. One who’d played an elaborate game of make-believe, of knowing her down to her last thought, caring for her with his every breath, respecting and trusting her with his every fiber. It had all been empty. All the proclamations, the promises of forever.

The world started spinning again, swinging her away with it. He receded as everything drowned in a sea of distorted images.

“Gabrielle.”

That growl, a predator enraged to find his prey about to escape his talons. She turned back, no survival instinct left.

And he delivered the killing blow. “If you have any shred of self-preservation left, you will make sure I never see you again.”

She stared into his cruel eyes, and everything came to an end.

Chapter Fifteen

Leandro had been right.

He’d warned him. Durante hadn’t listened. He’d been deaf. Blind. And totally out of his mind.

Madmen didn’t realize the depth of their insanity. Didn’t see it at all. Saw it as justified action, inescapable reaction.

He’d foamed and fermented in the delusion, thrashed and plummeted down a spiral of intensifying agony. Then he’d hit bottom. And he’d remembered them. Gabrielle’s eyes. In the blood-red haze of his fevered memories. The shock of letdown there, the horror of loss. The realization that the one who’d pledged to protect her from all harm, the only one she’d trusted with her true self, was the one dealing the deathblow. And he’d known.

She had nothing to do with any of this. Hadn’t known most of it. What she’d hidden had been the burden, the pain he’d seen in her eyes. That she couldn’t tell him what wasn’t hers to tell. She’d tried to tell him that.

He believed her. Without question. Now. When it was too late.

No. He couldn’t let it be. He wouldn’t. He would do anything to turn back the clock. Erase the hurt he’d inflicted on her.

But he’d resurfaced from his madness to find her gone. Two days ago. He’d learned that she’d left within an hour of his throwing her out of his life with a threat he wouldn’t have hurled at his worst enemy. But he’d thought her far worse than that then. He’d thought her his murderer. When he’d been the one who’d stuck a knife in her heart. And twisted.

He didn’t deserve her forgiveness.

But he would. Whatever and however long it took, he would.

Gabrielle counted her steps, her breaths. The seconds.

It was the one way she could go on from one to the next. She had this conviction that if she stopped counting, she’d stop moving, stop breathing. Stop moving forward in time. Be trapped forever in a second of pure agony.