Chapter 33
Daniil
Normally I take a separate car to Parliament House on the days I’m there, so I can leave whenever I want. Today, however, I let Marcus know that I want to ride with Jesper. He looks up from his laptop in surprise when I slide into the back of the Town Car with him.
“Good morning,” Jesper says casually. “What’s going on?”
“I thought we’d ride together today,” I reply.
“Did you want to discuss the pipeline?” he asks.
“I do. But I want to discuss something else as well.”
“All right.”
“What the fuck was that bullshit last night?” I ask, meeting his gaze squarely.
He blinks. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Jesper. We used to be married. I know you extremely well. You’ve never, in all the years I’ve known you, made a strange, passive-aggressive comment while I was with someone else.”
A wall of red creeps up his neck but then he shrugs. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You didn’t offend me, but it felt like you were trying to get a rise out of Courtney. Why?”
“I wasn’t,” he protests.
“Jesper, stop.” I glare at him. “Tell me the truth. Is this some bullshit unfinished business to do with our relationship? If so, let’s talk this out and be done with it. I thought we moved on.”
“Yes, of course we have.” He sighs, finally looking away. “I don’t know what came over me. I apologize. A moment of…jealousy, I guess.”
“Why with Courtney and never with anyone else?”
“You’ve never looked at anyone else like you look at her.” He pauses. “Not even me.”
Am I supposed to apologize for not loving him the way I should have? I already have, multiple times, but if it keeps peace at the palace and within the organization, then I’ll do it again.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” I say quietly. “That was never my intention. And I don’t know what else I can say except that the way I treated you was wrong. I wish I could change the past, but I can’t.”
“I know. And I’m sorry if I caused issues with you and Courtney last night. It was stupid. It won’t happen again.”
“So we’re good?” I ask. “Because I want her to stay. I want her to want to be with me. Are you going to be okay with her living here, with me? Among us? Becoming one of us?”
He frowns. “I thought she didn’t want to be a Protector?”
“She doesn’t, but she becomes a part of the family once she’s with me.”
“Yes, of course.” He waves a hand. “Don’t mind me. Joe and I had a fight yesterday morning and I was still annoyed. I was being a jerk. You have my word it won’t happen again.”
“I appreciate that.”
“So. You’re…happy? With Courtney?”
I relax. “I am.”
“And you think she’ll move here?”
“I don’t know,” I hedge. I’m not going to get into the intricacies of our relationship with him, even if we’ve both apologized and are moving on. “We’re still trying to work things out. She’s not going to be happy being a kept woman, but she also doesn’t want to be a Royal Protector.”
“She’s a pilot, right? She could be part of the flight crew.”
“I don’t think that suits her either, not with a baby.”
“Quite a dilemma.”
“Anyway, talk to me about the pipeline.”
“You’re going to continue to get pushback,” he says. “Parliament isn’t on board with outsourcing our oil.”
“We’re not outsourcing,” I grunt in frustration.
How many times do I need to have this conversation with people?
“We’re expanding. Our refinery isn’t big enough to keep up with demand, and the country needs money.
By building the pipeline into Turkiye, we not only provide a ton of jobs for our own people—for the next five years at least—but we also bring in a ton more money once it’s done. ”
“People are hungry now,” he says. “They can’t wait five years for a pipeline to bring in money.”
“And we’re providing for those people,” I remind him.
“We donate hundreds of thousands of dollars of our personal money—me and Erik and Sandor and Elen—to feeding and clothing people in the rural areas. Financing jobs and infrastructure. But if we continue to finance the entire country, the money is going to run out. Then we can’t help anyone, not even ourselves. ”
“Oh, so this is about your money,” he says in frustration. “Because you’re not rich enough?”
“You know that’s not it,” I snap. “But our personal money isn’t infinite. We need a back-up plan, which is what this pipeline is. Proving financial stability for Limaj and its people for decades to come, so they don’t have to count on the royal family’s personal fortune.”
“At the expense of our souls.”
“Our souls?” I stare at him. “Whose side are you on?”
“Believe it or not, I’m on the side of the people. Who don’t want us to outsource.”
“Where do you get your information?” I demand.
“Because we’ve done a number of polls and they all show that the people don’t care where the money comes from, as long as it comes.
Yes, the people in Hiskale are a little more hesitant but that’s because they have jobs and the winters here are milder.
They don’t care about whether the people up north are going to be warm come January. ”
“Look, I just think you’re going to need a better argument if you want this to pass. Turkiye needs to give up more.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I say. “We’ve gone back and forth with them for more than a year—this is what they’re willing to commit to. They pay for half the cost of the pipeline and take forty percent of the oil profits. We literally couldn’t afford to build the pipeline without them.”
“Forty percent is too much. If you can get it down to thirty—”
“If I could get it down to thirty, I would have done it already,” I say, throwing up my hands. “This isn’t a new deal. We’ve been working on it for nearly eighteen months.”
“Obviously, I don’t have your power.” He shrugs. “But I’m telling you—I’ve been talking to people—they’re going to vote it down today. Again.”
Motherfucker.
* * *
As predicted, the bill didn’t pass and we’re going back to the drawing board. By the time I get back to the palace, it’s after eight and I’ve missed both dinner with Courtney and bathtime with Micah. He’s fast asleep when I get to Courtney’s suite, and I sink down on the couch in frustration.
“Bad day, huh?” She moves behind me and tugs off my tie. Then she puts her hand on my shoulders and starts to rub.
“Fuck, that feels good.” I let my head drop to my chest.
She kneads and squeezes, using the perfect amount of pressure to make goose bumps break out on my skin. Using the heel of her palm, she presses a little harder on a knot in my right shoulder blade and I moan, a day’s worth of tension seeping out of me one stroke at a time.
“Thank you,” I murmur after she’s worked on me for a good fifteen minutes. “Come sit with me.”
She moves around the couch and nestles in beside me. “What happened?” she asks.
“Parliament is torn. It’s almost right down the middle. They’re being stubborn.”
“I don’t know anything about the political climate here but if fifty percent of the politicians who represent the people are worried about it, are you sure you made the best deal?”
“I’m not sure of anything,” I admit. “But Erik and I have been working on this for close to eighteen months. Initially, Turkiye wanted fifty percent of the oil profits, but we talked them down to forty. We simply don’t have the infrastructure to build another refinery here.
The one we use now is old and outdated. In the seventies, that was all we needed.
Fifty years later, it’s not enough. This deal with Turkiye is an investment in all our futures. ”
“If half of Parliament doesn’t see it that way—what else is going on?
” she asks. “Is it greed? Is there something to do with your current refinery that pays these men kickbacks that they’ll lose?
Are there multiple political parties somehow vying for dominance?
Again, I don’t know how your politics work here, but I’m very familiar with politics in general.
And it’s never black and white with stuff like this. ”
“And much less so here,” I agree. “We’re trying to become democratic but it’s a long road to get there. Erik is the king and holds ultimate power because we know that we’re one election away from another revolution.”
“Is it that precarious?” she asks in surprise.
“It is.”
“So then there’s definitely something going on you don’t know about. And the only way you’re going to get your bill passed is to find out what it is.”
I stare at her, pride and confusion battling within me.
Why didn’t I think of that? Or Erik or Sandor, for that matter?
We have all kinds of surveillance, spies in many areas, and a lot of back door deals going on to make sure we keep up with everything.
And yet, we never even considered that something has slipped through the cracks, and it took my American girlfriend to point it out. We thought we were on top of all the major issues.
“Can you give me five minutes?” I ask abruptly, pulling out my phone. “I need to call Erik for a moment, and then I’m all yours.”
She smiles. “Take your time. I’m going to call down to the kitchen and have some dinner sent up for us.”
“You didn’t eat?” I ask in surprise.
“I was waiting for you.” She squeezes my arm. “Do what you have to do. Cook said it’ll take about fifteen minutes for her to warm up a meal for us.”
“Thank you, Sweetheart.” I press my lips to hers and then call Erik.
We have to look into this situation in Parliament immediately.
Before we waste any more time on a bill that’s doomed to fail.