Luis (Royal Caleva #2)

CHAPTER 1

“Ten minutes until start time, Su Majestad.”

Luis Dragón, King of Caleva, nodded to the young woman wearing a dark suit. She curtsied before scurrying out of the private chamber where the king, his son, Prince Raul, and his assistant, Bruno, waited. Luis was here to preside over the annual opening of the new session of the two legislative consejos that helped govern Caleva.

He treasured this particular ceremony because each year he used it to set forth his hopes, dreams, and plans for the country he both led and served, the country he loved to the marrow of his bones. This fresh beginning gave him the chance to rise above the daily responsibilities of being the head of state to express his larger vision for Caleva, with the goal of inspiring others to join him in it.

He glanced around the salón reserved for royalty when they visited the Palacio de la Ley, the building where the legislature had met for three centuries. It was in the oldest part of the original government structure and had rough stone walls, carved wooden beams in the vaulted ceiling, and heavy oak furniture with Calevan green velvet cushions trimmed in gold.

“I have your speech here.” Bruno held up the black leather folder embossed with the Calevan coat of arms, as though Luis had been searching for it in his survey of the room. Bruno would place the folder on the podium just before Luis arrived there, so no one could sneak a peek at its contents.

“Gracias.” Luis walked to an ornate gilded mirror to make sure his medals were still neatly lined up on his deep-red uniform jacket. He had long ago stopped wearing the crown and cape for this ceremony, but every other embellishment of gold braid and regal embroidery was on display.

The royal uniform reminded the members of both councils that Luis’s power came from a different source than theirs. They were voted into and out of office at the whim of their public.

After the election, Luis would still be king.

“You look magnificent, Pater,” Raul said.

“You look equally resplendent,” Luis said with a smile.

Raul was also dressed in full royal regalia, although with fewer medals and less gold braid. When he looked at Raul, Luis saw himself at the age of thirty, with the same dark brown hair, pale blue eyes, high-angled cheekbones, and lean, athletic build. Raul had an easier smile and a more relaxed charm, but behind those surface attributes burned the same intensity and devotion to the crown that Luis felt.

Of course, now Luis’s hair and beard were salt-and-pepper, a sign of maturity he blamed more on being king than on his fifty-odd years of age. Running a small but wealthy and strategically important country required a constant balancing act on both the domestic and international fronts.

Raul tugged at his high, gold-encrusted collar. “You could use one of these jackets as an implement of torture.”

Luis had been king for almost three decades, so he barely noticed the discomfort. Raul had been born just before Luis was crowned and therefore was less practiced.

“The collars are meant to force you to stand straight,” Luis said. “To impress your loyal subjects with your strong backbone and authority.”

“And your ability to endure strangulation.” Raul made a comical face.

Despite the joking complaint, Luis was struck by how much his son had matured in the last couple of years. Guilt over his cousin Gabriel’s kidnapping had toughened Raul, even though he bore no blame for the terrible crime. As a father, Luis wished Raul had not been forced to learn in such a harsh way about the burden of being the heir to the throne. The position he was born into meant that people would put themselves in harm’s way for him, as Gabriel had, whether Raul wished them to or not.

As the king, Luis appreciated the fact that Raul was now better prepared for his future. In fact, his son was already taking on some of Luis’s lesser duties and excelling at them. He was ready for more.

The door opened again. “Five minutes,” the same young woman said with another curtsy before she dashed away.

Sparks of energy fizzed through Luis’s blood.

“Let’s go give them hell.” Raul reached for the doorknob, but the door swung open before he could grasp it.

“Su Alteza Real, Su Majestad.” Mikel Silva, the behind-the-scenes head of security for the royal family, bowed to Raul and more deeply to Luis. The man somehow managed to make his formal greetings both respectful and ironic. As always, he was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and sober red tie. “My apologies for disturbing you at a critical moment, but we have an urgent situation.”

“I have an important speech to give,” Luis pointed out, although Mikel knew that, of course.

“Yes, Se?or,” Mikel said. “However, you need to read this.” He held out a plain white envelope.

“What is it?” Luis asked as he accepted the envelope.

“A letter from Odette Fontaine.”

Luis hated only three people in the world, a surprisingly small number, given how long he had been king.

Odette Fontaine was number one on his list because she had orchestrated the kidnapping and maiming of his nephew and had tried to murder his son.

Cold fury at the woman whipped through him. “What the hell does Odette want?”

“Read the letter, Se?or,” Mikel said. “I have already and would recommend you do so in private.”

The only other people in the room were Raul and Bruno, two men Luis trusted with his life. If Mikel felt they should be excluded, the letter must be explosive.

“Will you excuse us?” Luis said.

Although Raul stiffened, he and Bruno took Luis’s request for the command it was and exited the salón.

The envelope was not sealed. Luis yanked the single page of paper out and unfolded it.

He recognized Odette’s slanted handwriting. Twenty-nine years before, after his wife’s death, Luis had made the mistake of having a six-month relationship with the Frenchwoman. Disgust at his stupidity fanned his anger.

My dearest Luis,

Remember the drive back to the palace after le Duc de Montagne’s ball? There were consequences. One consequence, at any rate. You have a child.

We need to discuss this immediately, or I will release the news to the media within one hour of the time I hand this letter to the prison warden. He is aware of its urgency.

Your ever devoted,

Odette

He reached back into his memories of that turbulent time. The ball had been a private celebration, not a state occasion, so he had taken Odette as his partner. She had worn a dark blue dress that clung to every curve, which meant she could wear no undergarments underneath it, a fact she reminded him of in a throaty whisper at every opportunity. She also had spent the evening touching him and dancing as close to him as possible, while he had drunk more wine than was prudent.

It had been late when they climbed into the royal limousine for the hour-long drive back to Castillo Draconago. The screen between the driver and the passenger compartment had already been closed.

Odette had yanked her dress up to her waist and straddled him on the seat, unzipping his trousers, pushing aside his briefs, and impaling herself on his already erect cock in one swift movement. Enflamed by her hours-long seduction, he had fucked her.

Without a condom.

Could Odette have gotten pregnant?

No. She had wanted to be queen. If she had carried his child after that encounter, she would have used that as leverage to force him to marry her.

He crumpled the letter in his fist. “She’s lying, as always.” A cruel lie, since she knew how much he had longed for more children.

“She says she has proof.” Mikel’s expression was tight with frustration. “Proof that will be released to the media if you don’t go to the prison to meet with her.”

“Joder!” Luis swore. He did not believe in her proof, but the media would still run with the story. It was too juicy. “She’s in a maximum security prison. How can she get information out to the press?”

Mikel’s jaw tightened. “She is allowed visitors, all carefully screened. She has had only three. A work colleague, her lawyer, and her cousin. None of them are reporters, but any of them could have this proof somewhere outside the prison. Any conversation with the lawyer is confidential and therefore not recorded, so she could be the conduit…or it could be someone outside the prison.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We don’t have time to track down the source.”

“She could have done this at any time in the last year, since all she has to do is stare at her cell walls,” Luis said.

“She knows you are giving your annual speech to open the consejos,” Mikel said. “She wants to force you to cancel it.”

Luis started to swear again before a thought struck him. When he was Raul’s age, he had already been king for several years. “Bring Raul and Bruno back in.”

Mikel gave him a questioning look but opened the door and called to the two men waiting outside.

Once the door was closed behind them, Luis turned to Raul. “I have no choice but to go deal with Odette immediately. She threatens to release highly sensitive information if I do not go now.” He gestured to the leather folder in Bruno’s hands, the gold-embossed Calevan coat of arms catching a gleam of light. “You know this speech as well as I do because you helped write it. You will deliver it in my place.”

Excitement and fear tightened Raul’s face as he glanced at the folder. “I…I’m not the king. My words will not carry the same weight.”

“You will make them carry the same weight,” Luis said. “You are el Principe de los Lirios.”

His son straightened, his shoulders square. “I will not disappoint you.” His voice was thick with emotion.

“Of course you won’t, hijo mío.” Luis softened his tone as he squeezed his son’s shoulder, feeling the solid muscle under the wool and gold braid. “Nothing you do could ever disappoint me.” He shifted his gaze to Bruno. “I leave you with the task of coming up with a good excuse for my absence.”

His assistant didn’t flinch. “Of course, Se?or.”

Luis turned to Mikel. “You will accompany me to the prison.”

“Would you like to change your clothes first?” Mikel asked.

“No. Let Odette see that she has dragged me away from my duties, as she intended,” Luis said.

“She forgets that you have a worthy stand-in,” Mikel said.

Luis looked at Raul, pride expanding in his chest at his son’s outward composure. Luis was asking a lot of his son, but he had no doubt that Raul could handle it.

The door opened again, this time to admit the Portavoz del Consejo who would officially announce the king to the consejos. “Su Majestad, Su Alteza Real, it is time to go.”

“There’s been a change of plans,” Luis said. “I’ve been called away. El Principe Raul will deliver the opening address.”

“But, Se?or, the ciudadanos are expecting the king.” The official was aghast.

Luis leveled his gaze at the man. “El principe speaks for me. His words are my words.”

Luis sat in the big leather chair behind the warden’s desk in CárcelMax, Caleva’s maximum security prison, as he waited for Odette Fontaine. He forced himself to sit still, despite the anger boiling inside him. Mikel had finished sweeping the area for any kind of surveillance and then set up a jamming device to add another layer of privacy. Bodyguards were stationed at every door into the warden’s office. Not Luis’s personal ones. They were too recognizable. Mikel had brought in his own private security team, anonymous men and women dressed in prison guard uniforms.

Still, Luis would be alone with the woman he hated most in this world.

The woman who had nearly destroyed Luis’s beloved nephew, Gabriel. For a moment, he was back in those terrible days after Gabriel’s kidnappers had sent Luis his nephew’s severed ear. He had wondered then what other mutilations his abductors would subject their victim to as time ticked away. Thank God Mikel had been there to negotiate Gabriel’s release before anything worse could occur. Luis banished the gut-wrenching fear to its dark place in his memories. He could not allow emotion to cloud his thinking when dealing with Odette.

Despite his resolution, when the door swung open, he dug his fingers into the upholstered arms of the chair as his hatred surged.

The bodyguards ushered Odette through the doorway, the chains that joined her hand and ankle cuffs clanking as she shuffled across the carpet.

She looked old and drawn, the glaring yellow of her shapeless shirt and trousers giving her pale skin a jaundiced tint. Her reddish-brown hair was yanked back in a messy ponytail. A flare of satisfaction warmed him.

Luis gestured to the straight-backed metal chair in front of the desk, and the bodyguards moved her to it.

“Sit,” Luis said.

Instead, Odette raised her hands as far as she could before the chain stopped her. “Really? Do you feel these are necessary?” Incredibly, her voice held amused condescension.

“Sit down,” Luis repeated, his tone like granite.

She shrugged and sat, resting her clanking wrists on her thighs.

“You may go.” Luis nodded to the bodyguards.

“You’re not afraid I’ll try to wrap the chains around your neck and strangle you?” Odette’s eyebrows were raised.

Luis and the bodyguards ignored her.

As soon as the door clicked shut, Odette smiled, her gaze skimming over Luis’s uniform. “Did I drag you away from another engagement?” she drawled.

“As you are well aware, you did. Fortunately, Raul was prepared to take my place.” He kept his tone neutral.

Satisfaction flashed across her face. “You sent a boy to deliver a king’s speech?”

“Raul is a prince.” Luis leaned back in the chair. “What is this new lie you have manufactured?”

“You don’t fool me,” Odette scoffed. “You dropped everything and came running when you read the letter.”

“I came because you claim to have evidence of this ridiculous story. What is it?”

The short silence pulsed with her angry frustration.

“Our daughter lives in Iowa,” Odette said. “I went to see her.”

A tiny crack of doubt worked its way into his certainty that Odette was lying. Her trip to Iowa had been the last unresolved thread in the investigation into Gabriel’s kidnapping. No one could figure out why she would go there.

Yet her actions still made no sense to him.

“If you truly had carried my child, you would have used her as leverage long ago,” he said. “You wanted to be queen.”

“Va te faire foutre, connard!” Spit droplets sprayed from her mouth as she cursed him. “You dumped me like a sack of trash. You did not deserve to have me as your queen, and I was not going to give you the happiness of having a child. I gave birth and tossed her away like you did me.” She leaned forward. “And now—now that you have been deprived of holding her as a child, of grooming her to be a perfect princess, of being loved by her as her father—now I reveal her to you. This is my revenge on you, one I have waited almost three decades to take.”

If she had really had a daughter and cast her off, she was even more monstrous than he could fathom. Yet her words about not being able to hold his daughter, of not having her love him as a father, struck at him like knives. Odette was right about how effective her revenge would be…if it was true.

“What did your daughter say when you met her in Iowa?” Luis couldn’t imagine the reunion had been a happy one.

“Nothing. I didn’t speak to her. I saw her.” Odette’s face twisted with disgust. “She wore no makeup. She was dressed in jeans and a shapeless sweatshirt. I overheard her voice. She sounds like un péquenaud, an uneducated yokel. I could not bear it, so I left. That was not my daughter.”

“You made her that way by refusing to accept your responsibility as her mother.” His voice was harsh. “I do not understand how seeing your daughter incited your desire to kidnap Raul.”

“Because instead of being un péquenaud, my daughter should have been a princess. She should have been raised in a palace by me as the queen.” Odette’s mouth twisted in fury. “You did not deserve to have a perfect prince of a son. Your child needed to be ruined like mine. You needed to suffer the way I did when I looked at my daughter. Too bad those incompetents took Gabriel instead of Raul.”

“You find wearing blue jeans and speaking with a Midwestern American accent comparable to slicing off a young man’s ear?” He had met many unstable people in his reign, but this went far beyond that. He would not remind her that he loved Gabriel like a son. That the torment had almost been worse because his nephew had not been the real target.

“Oh, come now,” Odette said. “It was not so terrible. I made sure one of the world’s best ear surgeons performed the surgery to ensure the reconstruction would be easy. No one can tell that Gabriel’s ear is not the one he was born with.”

His vision went red as he imagined wrapping his fingers around her throat and feeling her struggle to breathe while he squeezed.

After the mutilation, Gabriel had believed he could no longer hear music properly. He had nearly given up his passion for playing flamenco guitar. If he hadn’t met Quinn, he might have done so, depriving the world of a brilliant talent and, even worse, extinguishing his own radiant spirit.

Luis clenched his fingers into fists so tight his fingernails bit into his skin. When he finally had control of himself again, he asked, “How do you expect me to believe that this long-lost child is really mine and not a creation of your twisted need to punish me?”

“I put your name—Luis Dragón—on the birth certificate as her father. That was to needle you when I decided to tell you about her. There it was, the truth of her parentage, but no one in the U.S. would ever believe it was you, the King of Caleva, even if they connected you with the name. They would think I was delusional…or joking.” Odette laughed, a sound of smug satisfaction. “And my secret would be safe because you didn’t know she existed so you wouldn’t look for her.”

“That is not proof that she is mine,” Luis said.

Odette waved that away before her expression turned calculating. “I have her DNA analysis from a blood sample taken when she was born. It was entered into a private genetic databank.”

At last, something that could be confirmed or denied. His nephew’s fiancée, Quinn, was an expert at tracking information in databases. She could find the DNA analysis and confirm or disprove its validity.

“That is the extent of your so-called evidence?” Luis put unalloyed scorn in his voice, but the crack of doubt in his mind widened.

“It will be enough to stir up a storm in the media.” Odette sneered. “The noble, widowed king has a bastard child. Quite a blot on the escutcheon.”

“Our affair was never a secret, and it is now ancient history,” Luis said. “The media has already had its fun with it.”

“Ah, but a child! In line to inherit the Dragon Throne. That will pique the media’s interest,” Odette said.

“The media isn’t going to run a story based on an old DNA record in an unofficial database. All that might prove is that a baby you delivered nearly thirty years ago was related to me.” Luis sat back in a pose of unconcern. “You have no evidence that the young woman in Iowa is my child. If the media claims she is, it will be met with a denial and the threat of a lawsuit from the palace, not to mention whatever legal action the girl’s family might take to protect her.”

In fact, his press office would quietly put out the word that this story had come from a psychopathic criminal bent on revenge and had no basis in fact. No respectable media outlet would touch it after that. He didn’t care about the tabloids.

Odette leaned forward, her eyes gleaming with sly cunning. “But you always wanted more children. How can you brush off the possibility that you might have a grown-up daughter who is alive and well and living in Iowa?”

He couldn’t. Even worse, he could feel the bud of hope beginning to unfurl in his chest. Odette wanted to make him suffer, and she had found a brilliant new way to do it. “Tell me how to access the databank record.”

“Oh, no. You will have to get your minions to do that. But I will give you a gift,” Odette said. “Your daughter’s name is Grace. Grace Howard.”

It was a poisoned gift, and Odette knew that. Instead of an anonymous woman, he now had a name for the fresh-faced, jeans-clad young lady who might be his daughter. “What do you want?”

“I want to be acknowledged as the mother of the bastard princess, of course. It is my due.” Odette’s smile held smug triumph. “Think of it. Your child’s mother is a convicted criminal, locked up in prison. What a blow that will be to your much-vaunted honor! The perfect King of Caleva has a hideous skeleton rattling around in his palace closet.”

Luis didn’t care about a blow to his own reputation. He would, though, be concerned for the unknown young woman’s feelings. If she existed. Until he could confirm that, there was no point in further discussion with this madwoman.

“This conversation is finished.” He rose to his feet. “If I have a daughter, I will find her myself.”

He pushed a button on the warden’s desk phone, and the door opened instantly to admit Mikel. “You may remove the prisoner,” Luis said.