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and so desperately hurting. He’d gone, and he’d stayed away for fifteen years, only to come back because he’d thought his father had finally seen the light. Would finally admit he was sorry, he’d been wrong, he really did love him.
Blah. Blah. Blah. None of that, of course, had happened. But he’d told Liana enough, and he didn’t feel like admitting to that.
‘I’m sorry,’ Liana whispered, and brushed a kiss across his lips. ‘For all of it.’
‘So am I.’ He kissed her back, needing her touch, her sweetness. Needing to forget all the hurt and anger and disappointment he’d just raked up with his words.
And she did make him forget it; in Liana’s arms he didn’t feel like the sad, needy boy desperate for love. He didn’t feel like a man racked by remorse and guilt for turning his back on his duty. He didn’t feel like a king who didn’t deserve his crown.
He just felt like a man, a man this amazing, wonderful, vibrant woman loved.
And that was all he wanted to be.
* * *
That night Liana lay in bed with Sandro’s arm stretched out across her stomach and felt as if the first of the past’s ghosts had been banished.
But what about hers?
She recalled Sandro’s innocent question, so gently posed. So Chiara was just one of the unlucky ones?
She hadn’t told Sandro the truth about that. About her. Chiara had been unlucky because she’d had a sister who had gone blank and still and unmoving when she’d needed her most. She’d had Liana.
And while part of her craved to tell Sandro the truth, to have him know and accept her wholeheartedly, the rest of her was too afraid because there were no guarantees. No promises that Sandro would accept her, would love her, if he knew how badly she’d failed someone she’d loved.
Her parents hadn’t. Her father hadn’t spoken to her for months after Chiara’s death; even now he never quite looked at her when they talked. And he never showed her any affection. They’d never been the most demonstrative family—Chiara had cornered the market on that—but since her little sister’s death her father hadn’t touched her at all. Not one kiss or hug or even brush of the hand.
And could she really blame him?
She was a hypocrite, Liana knew, for wanting Sandro’s secrets, his pain and shame and fear, and keeping all of hers back. If she’d been able to accept and love him, why couldn’t he do the same for her?
Because your secrets are worse, your sins greater.
And yet not telling him—keeping that essential part of her back—felt like a cancer gnawing at all of her certainties, eating her heart.
How could she keep something so crucial from him?
SANDRO ATTEMPTED TO listen as one of his cabinet ministers talked, his voice reminding him of the buzzing of a bumblebee that flung itself against the window of one of the palace’s meeting rooms. He’d been closeted in here with his cabinet for nearly three hours and he’d barely been able to hear a word that had been said.
All because of Liana.
Ever since he’d unburdened himself to her he’d felt as if they were closer than ever. He loved her more than ever, for simply loving him. And that fact—that they actually loved each other—felt like an incredible blessing, a miracle.
A wonder and a joy.
And yet occasionally, when he glimpsed the shadows in her eyes, the way she’d suddenly turn away, he’d still feel as if she was keeping something from him. Hiding part of herself, but he didn’t want to press. Demand answers she might not be ready to give. They had time, after all. Their love was new, perhaps fragile. He wasn’t ready to test it in that way.
They had time.
‘Your Highness?’
With effort Sandro jerked his gaze back to his expectant cabinet and attempted to focus on the discussion of domestic policy that had been taking up the better part of the afternoon.
‘Yes?’
The minister of economic policy cleared his throat. ‘We were just going to take a look at the budget Prince Leo proposed....’
Sandro glanced down at the painstakingly and laboriously made list of figures he’d assumed his ministers had put together. Not just Leo.
‘Leo drafted this budget?’ he asked, heard how sharp his voice sounded. ‘When?’
He saw several ministers glance at Leo sitting on the other end of the table and an unease that had been skirting the fringes of his mind for months now suddenly swooped down and grabbed him by the throat. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe.
‘A few years back, when—’ one of the ministers began, glancing uncertainly at Leo, whose face was expressionless, his body still.
‘Years,’ Sandro repeated, his mind spinning. Years ago, when Leo had thought he would be king.
He turned to stare at his brother, who gazed evenly back. ‘I didn’t realise you had taken such an interest, Leo,’ he murmured. His father would have been alive, of course, and reigning as king. Leo would have been waiting, no more than a reluctant placeholder. Or so Sandro had thought.
But perhaps his brother hadn’t been so reluctant, after all.
‘I took an interest in all government policy,’ Leo answered, and Sandro couldn’t tell a thing from his tone. ‘Naturally I wanted to be prepared.’
‘For when you would become king,’ Sandro clarified, and he felt a silent tension ripple its way around the room, felt it in Leo’s body as well as his own.
‘Yes.’
The air felt charged, electric. Why hadn’t Leo told him this before? Why had he kept it from him, like some damn secret he was the only one who didn’t know?
‘Perhaps we ought to review your proposals,’ Sandro said after a moment. ‘I’d be interested in knowing just what they are.’
Something flickered across Leo’s face, something sad, almost like grief. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll have my assistant put all the relevant paperwork in your study.’
They held each other’s gaze for a moment longer, a moment that felt taut with tension, almost hostile. Then Sandro broke first, reaching for another sheaf of papers as the meeting went on.
* * *
Three hours later Sandro sat in his father’s study, dazed by what he had learned and read. What he had never known, even if he should have. Guessed, or at least wondered about.
For fifteen years Leo had thought he would be king. Sandro had been utterly out of the picture, disinherited, as good as forgotten, and Leo would have been preparing for his own kingship, planning on it. And then Sandro had swept in and taken it away without so much as a passing thought for his brother.
He sank onto a chair in his study, his head in his hands. He’d spent the past few hours reading all of Leo’s proposals, well-thought-out multi-year plans for industry, economic policy, energy efficiency. After his father’s outdated and uninterested reign, Leo had been poised to take Maldinia in a whole new and exciting direction.
Until Sandro had returned and taken it all away from him.
Sandro’s mind spun with realisations, with new understanding about the nature of the coolness between him and the brother he’d once loved more than any other person. The brother who had hero-worshipped him as a child. The brother who he had left because he’d been so angry and hurt by his father’s contempt and rejection.
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