CHAPTER ONE

      MARCUS ALRIKSON LEANED back in the ergonomic comfort of the luxurious leather chair—his one extravagance in an office he spent way too much of his time in. But needs must when the devil drove. Even when the devil was his own personal demon—the one that ensured he never lost sight of the need to succeed.

      Right now his focus was on ensuring that the royal wedding was a success. It could be argued that as Chief Advisor to the Prince of Lycander his remit didn’t include wedding planning—and in truth the bride’s dress and the groom’s choice of tie didn’t interest him in the slightest. The security of the royal nuptials, however, was very much his responsibility—after all alongside his role of Chief Advisor he also headed up Alrikson Security, a byword in security provision services across Europe.

      There was also the fact that he had a great deal of respect for Prince Frederick—the Prince was a good man, a ruler with a vision for the future of Lycander. A vision shared by Marcus.

      He focused on the screen and studied his plan. His formidable brain assessed the risks, considered the most acute of angles, searched for the tiniest of chinks in the armour of defence and protocol that surrounded the upcoming wedding extravaganza.

      In mere weeks Prince Frederick of Lycander would marry Sunita Bashwani-Greenberg, an ex-supermodel and mother of his two-year-old son Amil.

      The union was a love-match that the people of Lycander had mixed feelings about. Frederick’s ascent to the throne had been shrouded in tragedy and scandal, and it had taken him two years of fair and just rule even to begin the process of bringing the Lycandrian people round. And the throne still wobbled—Frederick had many enemies who would happily overthrow him and end Lycander’s monarchy, enemies who would sabotage the wedding.

      Not on Marcus’s watch. It was crucial that this wedding went without a hitch.

      His frown intensified as he glared at the screen, looking up only when he heard a knock on the door.

      ‘Come in.’

      A rare smile touched his lips as his sister entered the room. ‘Elvira.’

      ‘Hey, big bro.’

      ‘What can I do for you?’

      As always he felt a profound relief when he saw his little sister, and a sense of gratitude that her life had worked out—that she seemed to have adjusted after her shaky start. Now twenty-two, she was content and successful and in her final year of studying law at university.

      Speaking of which... His smile vanished. ‘Shouldn’t you be at lectures?’

      ‘Relax. I’m free of lectures this morning. My tutor’s ill, so I thought I’d drop in.’

      He should have known Elvira wouldn’t skip a lecture; for all his big-brother crackdown he knew that his sister took her studies seriously, and truly appreciated the opportunities life had granted her.

      No, not life. Those opportunities had come courtesy of death—the death of their criminal, alcoholic, violent parents in a fire. The same fire that a twelve-year-old Marcus had rescued his younger sister from, the identical inferno he had failed to rescue his parents from. Jonny and Alicia Brockley had perished.

      Marcus and Elvira had been adopted, and their lives had dramatically altered course. For the better. The knowledge was a permanent biting ache of guilt.

      Marcus shook his head—now was not the moment for a trip down the ravaged and torturous twists of memory lane.

      ‘Anything in particular on your mind?’ he asked as he gestured for Elvira to sit, and waited as she curled up in the comfy chair he’d sequestered from one of the many rooms of the Lycander Palace. His office was a mishmash taken from the mounds of furniture stockpiled by previous royal incumbents.

      ‘April Fotherington turned up at uni today...for “a chat”.’

      Marcus drummed his fingers on the desk in an irritated tattoo. April Fotherington was a writer for a popular upmarket celebrity magazine, and she was in the process of writing a feel-good article on the Lycander wedding. With an emphasis on feel-good. That had been the deal Marcus had made with the magazine’s editor-in-chief. In person. Emphatically.

      So a question begged. ‘Why would April need to have a chat with you? You don’t know Frederick or Sunita.’

      ‘She wasn’t asking about them. She was asking about Axel. About the night of his death and his relationship with Frederick.’

      Damn it to hell.

      Axel. He had been Marcus’s best friend, Frederick’s older brother, tragically killed in a car crash two years before. ‘Do you think she knows anything?’

      Elvira shrugged. ‘I don’t think she knows anything. But I think she suspects something is a bit off—which is a problem. April Fotherington is good at what she does and she may well pursue this angle.’

      ‘Did you give anything away?’

      Elvira narrowed her eyes. ‘Of course I didn’t. Give me some credit, Marcus.’

      ‘Sorry—and I’m sorry you were put in this position.’

      Frustrated anger welled inside him—the type that in his early years would have had him punching a wall. Now he had learnt to convert it into cold, hard determination.

      ‘I’ll deal with it. April won’t bother you again.’

      ‘Whoa—hold on.’ Elvira frowned. ‘Don’t go overboard—all she did was ask a few questions, and I may be completely wrong to think she suspects anything. She was perfectly nice about it as well.’

      ‘I get that. But I—’

      ‘You hate that your little sister is involved in this. But it’s not your fault. Or hers.’

      Yet somehow it felt that way to him.

      ‘Thank you, Elvi.’ Marcus rose to his feet.

      Elvira’s brow creased into deeper grooves. ‘Where are you going?’

      He grabbed his leather jacket from the back of the chair and shrugged into it.

      ‘I’m going to give you a lift to wherever you want to go, and then I am going to do my job and close April Fotherington down.’

      * * *

      April glanced down at her notebook, then up and around at her hotel room. Situated on the outskirts of Lycander’s town centre, it was pleasant enough, though not extravagant—well within her editor’s budgetary requirements. The room’s impersonal anonymity suited her, being reminiscent of her own small London flat.

      Chewing the end of her pencil, she stared down at the words she had written.

       Fact One: Two years ago Axel, heir to the throne of Lycander, died in a fatal car crash after attending an official state function.

       Fact Two: At said function Axel claimed that his younger brother Frederick had originally been asked to attend, and Axel had demanded to take his place.

       Fact Three: Prince Frederick, then known as the Playboy Prince, instead attended a celebrity-packed party aboard a yacht.

      Fact Four: In the here and now I have interviewed a political activist called Brian Sewell, who claims that, ‘Axel should never have been there.