The Wedding Party And Holiday Escapes Ultimate Collection. Кейт Хьюит
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been relieved to be done of his duty. He’d projected his own feelings onto Leo without ever really considering how his brother might have changed over the past decade and a half.
Yet the uncertainty had always been there, lingering. The fear that Leo would make a better king than he would—deserved to be king more than he did—had always taunted him from the dark corners of his heart and mind.
And now?
Now, Sandro thought numbly, he should step aside and let his brother rule as he’d been intending to for so long. As he deserved to. The cabinet would surely approve; their respect and admiration for Leo and his proposals had been evident in every word they’d spoken this afternoon.
And if Leo were king...Sandro would be free, as he’d claimed he always wanted. He could return to California, take up the reins of his IT firm once more. Be his own man. Live his own life.
Why did the thought make his stomach sour and his fists clench?
He knew why; of course he did. Because of Liana. Liana had married him to become queen. No matter what feelings had since grown between them since then, he could not escape that truth. He couldn’t escape the hard reality that their marriage was that of a king and queen, based on convenience and duty. Not a man and woman deeply in love, as much as he might still wish for it. As much as it had felt like that, for the past few weeks.
Weeks. They’d only had weeks together, little more than a handful of days. Put that against fifteen years of Leo working for the monarchy and there was no question. No contest.
A knock sounded on the door and Sandro jerked his head up, blinking the room back into focus. ‘Come in.’
‘Sandro?’ Leo stood in the doorway.
Sandro stared at his brother and felt a pressure build in his chest. Everything inside him felt so tight and aching he could barely force the words out. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Quietly Leo closed the door, leaned against it. ‘Tell you what, exactly?’
‘How hard you’ve been working these past fifteen years—’
Leo raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you think I’d been slacking off?’
‘No, but—’ Sandro raked his hands through his hair, shook his head. ‘I thought— I thought— I don’t know what I thought.’
‘Exactly,’ Leo answered, and with a jolt Sandro realised that underneath his brother’s unruffled attitude was a deep, latent anger—an anger he was now giving voice to, even as his tone remained steady. ‘You didn’t think. You haven’t thought about me or what I’ve been doing when you were away for fifteen years, Sandro, and you didn’t think about me when you returned.’
Sandro stared at Leo, felt a hot rush of shame sweep over him. ‘That’s not true, Leo. I did think of you.’
‘In passing?’ The cynicism in his brother’s voice tore at him. ‘A moment here or there? You didn’t even say goodbye.’
Sandro glanced down. No more excuses. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I should have. I should have done it all differently.’
‘So why did you leave, out of curiosity?’ Leo asked after a moment. ‘Did it all just get a bit much for you?’
‘I suppose you could say that. I felt— I honestly felt as if I’d lose my soul if I stayed another minute. All the lies, Leo, all the pretending. I couldn’t stand it.’
‘Neither could I.’
‘I know.’ Sandro dragged in a breath. ‘And I’m sorry if it felt as if I were dumping you in it. But when Father disinherited me— Well, I had no choice then. I had no place here.’
Leo’s expression tightened. ‘He only disinherited you because you told him you were leaving.’
‘I was bluffing,’ Sandro confessed flatly. He felt that familiar ache in his chest. ‘I was trying to make him admit— Oh, God, I don’t even know what. That he needed me. Loved me.’ He blinked hard and set his jaw. ‘Stupid, I know.’
He couldn’t look at Leo, didn’t want to see the pity or scorn on his brother’s face. ‘Not stupid,’ Leo said after a moment. ‘Naive, maybe, in believing there was anything good in him. He was the most selfish man I ever knew.’
‘And I can’t believe I didn’t see that until I was eighteen years old. You saw through him from the first, didn’t you? And I insisted on believing he was a good man. That he loved me.’
Leo shrugged. ‘I was always more cynical than you.’
‘I am sorry,’ Sandro said again, and he felt his regret and remorse with every fibre of his being. He hoped his brother did too. ‘I should have reached out to you. Explained. And when I came back I should have asked if you still wanted to be king—’
‘It’s not a game of pass the parcel, Sandro. Father chose you to be king. He never really wanted me.’
Sandro shook his head. ‘That’s not true. It was me he didn’t want.’
Leo let out a hard bark of laughter. ‘Oh? How do you reckon that?’
‘He told me. When I threatened to leave. He said he didn’t care, I should go right ahead, because he had another son who would do just as well.’
Leo stared at him for a long moment. ‘He never acted as if he thought I would,’ he finally said. ‘He was always telling me how I was second choice, second best, and he only put up with me at all because you were out of the picture.’
Sandro shook his head slowly. ‘What a bastard.’
‘I know.’
They sat in silence for a moment, but it lacked the tension and hostility of a few moments before. It felt more like grief.
‘Even when I came back,’ Sandro finally said, the words painful to admit even though he knew Leo needed to hear them, ‘he said he’d still rather have you as his heir. It was only because of the media fallout with Alyse that he summoned me.’
‘He was just looking for an excuse to get you back.’
‘I don’t know.’ Sandro sat back in his chair, weary and heartsick at the thought of how their father had manipulated them for so long. Hurt them with his casual cruelty. ‘It’s all so pointless. Why did he want us both to feel like a second choice? What good would it do?’
‘Because he was a weak man and he wanted us to be weak. Strength scared him. If one of us was actually a decent king, his own legacy would look even worse.’
‘Maybe so.’ They were both silent for a moment, and then, a new heaviness inside him, Sandro spoke again. ‘And you would be a good king, Leo, no matter what our father thought.’
Leo just shrugged. ‘I would have done my duty, just as you will.’
‘I wish I’d known—’
‘Do you, really?’ There was no anger in Leo’s voice, just a certain shrewdness. ‘Because you never asked.’
‘I know.’ His own weakness shamed him. He hadn’t asked because he hadn’t really wanted to know, no matter what he said now. Hadn’t wanted to consider that not only did he not deserve his title, but his brother did. ‘I’ve been ashamed of myself, Leo. For running away all those years ago. For not being strong enough to stay. What kind of king acts like that?’
Leo was silent for a long moment. ‘Sometimes it’s stronger to go.’
‘It didn’t feel like strength to me.’
‘You did what you needed to do, Sandro. There’s no point raking yourself over the coals now. The past is finished.’
‘It’s not finished,’ Sandro said quietly. ‘Not yet.’
Leo