Chapter 3
Three
CAMILLO
“Camillo! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
That was an accepted lie. It was what my brother said every time he saw me, whether or not he was really looking for me. And I didn’t exactly mind his presence. He’d spent his entire life being groomed to be a royal cog—a sort of public fixture since the monarchy didn’t really have much power these days apart from being able to veto laws—which the Parliament could overrule, so what was the point?
But Carlo was the face of the country. The sweetheart of the modern-age royalty. The man that would save us from being dissolved…or some other bullshit. It was almost impossible to care anymore.
My life wouldn’t change much if they decided to end the monarchy.
Eventually, the grandkids—or maybe the great-grandkids—would have to get jobs. But we’d be fine. I was born, I lived, and I’d die with some form of silver spoon in my mouth. My brother, of course, would entirely fall apart. By the time he was a teenager, he’d made the crown his entire personality. I wasn’t sure what the hell he’d be if not the crown prince.
The only time I’d gotten to see glimpses of the person he might have become without the crown was right after my accident. I’d come fully awake with his big face hovering over me, eyes wide and panicked.
He stayed by my side for three weeks. But it didn’t take long for him to go back to business as usual, which was mostly ignoring me unless he needed something or his girls wanted to hang out in my quarters.
“What do you want, your grace?” I asked him with a half bow, making sure my sarcasm was obvious.
He gave me a pissy stare. “It’s like you live to make me angry.”
“Ah, my plans are foiled,” I said, pressing my forearm over my eyes. “I’ll have to give up my villainy.”
“Are you five?”
“Thirty-five,” I said with a smile while he grimaced. He was thirty-seven, and he hated being reminded that he was probably going to take the throne when he was old enough to have a natural bend to his back. “Seriously, what do you want?”
Carlo’s knees bent just slightly like he was about to kneel in front of my chair, but the motion was aborted when I glared at him, and he straightened back up. It had taken me years to break him of that shitty habit. Instead, he backed up until he was leaning against the wall. The man was incapable of standing up straight unless there were eyes on him that didn’t belong to immediate family.
“I wanted to see how your day on the set was.”
“They haven’t begun shooting.” I recited the lines I’d been giving everyone for the last couple of weeks. People were way too excited to see our fake faces all over streaming services, and it was starting to give me a headache.
“Well, Maria and Beatriz have been bugging me all week about when they can come see them film.”
I couldn’t help but soften. I loved my nieces more than I loved anyone in my family. They were some of the only people who had never known me outside of my wheelchair, and they never, ever got that annoying nostalgic look on their faces as they thought about what life was like before.
I was just their cool uncle who could zoom them around the palace, freaking out their dad and pissing off their mom. And when my brother finally got his head out of his ass about what I was capable of, he started letting me take them on weekend getaways.
We’d stay in the countryside, having long movie binges and ordering delivery, surprising the shit out of every driver that came to the door when they were faced with the prince. We did shopping excursions, and I accompanied Maria on her sweet sixteen to Paris as one of the three chaperones, where I spoiled her enough to piss off my brother and his wife.
So if they asked me for something—if it was within my power to give it to them—I would.
“I knew that would wipe that look off your face,” Carlo said.
I rolled my eyes. “Belina doesn’t care about me taking them to the set?”
“Since when do you care what she thinks?”
That was fair. I shrugged and nodded. “As soon as I get a filming schedule, I’ll let you know.”
“Call my man. You know I don’t remember things like that,” he said, waving his hand at me.
We each had our own personal attendant who handled appointments, but mine was always tragically bored because I was a control freak who hated letting anyone do things for me. I might have blamed the accident and the intense desire to prove myself on that one, but I’d always been wildly neurotic.
I was the toddler who tried to fire my nanny because I didn’t like the way she picked out my clothes in the mornings.
I’d since grown into a more reasonable person. I think. It was hard to tell with so much fucking deference going on around me all the time. The one thing I would kill for was a little honesty, but people still believed that off with their heads bullshit, even though we’d abolished the death penalty in the 1920s.
“So…where were you today?” Carlo asked, picking at his nails.
Fuck, I just wanted to go to my apartment and rot on my sofa for a while. “PT.”
His face went a little pale. PT was when he stopped being by my side so much. He struggled with the reality of my body. He didn’t mind when I was wrapped up in long-sleeved shirts and trousers that hid the tubes draining my piss and the way my legs were freakishly thin, and the shoes that hid my feet, which were always swollen.
But when he had to face me—the raw, real me—he struggled. I knew what it was. Too many people looked at me and were terrified because they knew that this could be their reality with one wrong turn. And I couldn’t say it didn’t sting.
Being someone’s cautionary tale was just as bad as being someone’s bullshit inspiration porn.
“Anything else?” he asked, quickly changing the subject.
“Yeah, I went to a whore house and got off watching someone suck my limp dick.”
“Camillo! Jesus.”
“Can I go now?”
“You’re such an asshole.”
I grinned at him. “I know. Is there anything else, your grace ?”
“I hate you.”
He stormed off, and I couldn’t help but call after him, “Who’s the toddler now?”
He shot me a middle finger over his shoulder before turning the corner, and a beat later, I heard the door slam. I sagged with relief, then shook out my hands before giving my wheels a hard push, rolling along the smooth wooden floors my parents had renovated after I’d chosen the apartments I wanted to occupy after graduating.
My place was relatively small, which was how I liked it. There were too many rooms for just me, but I only used three of them. I had an office for writing, a gym so the rest of my body didn’t turn into a floppy mess, and then my bedroom with my massive, low-to-the-ground bed, and the en suite bathroom with my custom shower and bath. It was a damn delight, and now that I’d been able to shake off having a carer, I had the space entirely to myself.
I could be ugly and awkward and different, and I didn’t need to worry about anyone watching and judging and trying to fill my head with toxic positivity.
Rolling into the bedroom, I went right for the toilet to empty my bag and check to make sure I didn’t need a shit. With that done, I stripped down to boxers and a T-shirt, then used my trapeze handle to haul myself into my bed.
I clicked my do-not-disturb button on the remote, which would lock my doors and force anyone who wanted my attention to call, and then I lounged back. Eventually, I’d order dinner and maybe have a drink. For now, I just wanted to stare at my laptop screen and pretend like in a week, I wouldn’t have to babysit some asshole actor who was hoping to use me for his chances at an Oscar…or whatever the fuck award was for streaming TV.
But speaking of…
I’d previously told myself I would not be looking up Aleric King for any more than the information I’d already been given, but today, I wanted to know more. Janae had waxed poetic about him in The Faithless for so goddamn long that it turned into a little earworm. The only way to get rid of it was to see what all the fuss was about.
I typed his name and the title into the search bar, and a bunch of grainy late-eighties stills popped up. It had been a show, apparently. One that was on American cable TV. He looked oddly familiar, though he was young—a real early Johnny Depp vibe about him. The promo shots were of him in a leather jacket and a white T-shirt, a cigarette between his teeth.
It looked all wrong with his baby face. There was no way he could have been more than twelve, though that couldn’t be possible, could it? A kid that young working full-time on a show like that? But when I clicked on his profile, I realized the truth. He’d started the show at eight years old.
The first shots of him in the early seasons, he was bright-eyed and laughing. But as the seasons went on, something shifted. His dark circles were no longer hidden by makeup. He looked tired in ways no child should.
He looked defeated and broken and scared.
It was possible no one back then noticed because people rarely ever looked that deep, but I could see it because I knew that feeling a little too well.
There was something missing from the information I’d been given. Something the press was keeping under wraps. This was not some kid with a past drug problem trying to make a comeback. This was a man with a past full of trauma that no child should ever experience. Something that warped him—shaped him into the person he was today.
All I could ask now was who had failed him? Who allowed a child to be beaten down so badly they looked like this?
Several links down, there was an interview a few months after the cast had been announced for this godforsaken circus of my life. And in spite of my determination to stay out of Aleric’s personal business, I clicked on it. It buffered, cycled through three ads, and then his face came onto the screen.
Shit. I knew him. Well, I sort of knew him. It took me all of four seconds to recognize him as the guy from outside the studio today. The one with the cigarette who had clearly known who I was yet mouthed off to me anyway.
I’d liked that guy, damn it. I didn’t want him to be Aleric King.
That afternoon, he’d been wearing long sleeves, but in the interview video, he had on a silky button-up, the sleeves rolled to the elbow. His tan, slightly hairy forearms were covered from elbows to wrists in tattoos.
They reminded me of my own.
I traced my ink as I watched the interviewer take a seat in front of him.
His posture was relaxed, but I’d made it a habit of studying people, and I could see the tension he was holding in his body. And from the way his jaw ticked and how his eyes darted around as if looking for an escape, I could see the reality of what he was feeling: he wasn’t just nervous. He was scared .
“Thanks for joining us today. You must be really excited to have gotten this role.”
“It was unexpected,” he said.
His voice was the same as it had been today. A low, rich rumble, nothing like my own, and I wondered if he was going to use an affect when playing me. I couldn’t say I liked him any better than before, but I did like the sound of his voice. I could listen to him all day, which was a thought I did not want to be having.
I realized I was fixated on his lips and forced my gaze to his eyes, which was almost a bigger mistake. They were nothing short of gorgeous with rich, dark, thick lashes.
Christ, save me.
“I think we can all agree on that one,” the woman said with a laugh. “No one was expecting your comeback.”
Wow. She really just said it like that? What a bitch.
I saw his barely there flinch. “I know I’ve been gone a while?—”
“Kicking an addiction, right?”
His face paled. It was barely noticeable under the makeup he was wearing, but I could still see it. “That was a long time ago. I’ve been focusing on other parts of my life, but I felt like it was time to get back to what I really loved.”
“Has the studio been worried at all? The last time you were on camera?—”
“No,” he interrupted. “They’re not worried. I was a kid when everything happened.” His voice was very tense. “I just turned thirty-three. I think it would be odd for the studio to hold a childhood mistake against me for this many years.”
She cleared her throat awkwardly, and part of me wanted to cheer. This was still not the man I wanted to play me. He was the last person in the world I would have picked.
But something about him spoke to me.
Something about him said that if it had to be him, I wanted him to succeed just to spite all the people who didn’t want him to grow past his mistakes. Assuming they were mistakes. I was starting to doubt the stories of him being a drug-addicted teen diva who didn’t listen to authority figures.
I knew psychology well enough to know that kids who went down that path were created. Someone had done that to him.
And it made me angry, although I was still not on board with this whole thing.
I hit Pause on the video, and it stalled on his face. He wasn’t looking at the camera, but he didn’t need to. I didn’t need a direct gaze to see the pain and sadness and humiliation in his eyes. He’d come on to this program to talk about his future looking brighter, and all they wanted to talk about were his past failures.
And the ways that the people who were meant to protect him had let him down.
I hated that I understood. That I empathized. Sympathized. Mostly because he was a symptom of the problem I was facing right now. I’d written my book as a way of coping. A catharsis to remind myself that in spite of the pain and exhaustion and—if I was being honest with myself—fear of dying young, I was still strong enough to live .
I didn’t want that dramatized and plastered all over streaming services. I didn’t want to see some gorgeous, able-bodied man wheeling around pretending to be me for some award-induced nod to stroke his ego.
Yet, I felt for him.
And I hated myself for that.
Slamming my laptop shut, I flopped backward and not for the first time wished I could just rub one out like any normal man who needed an anger orgasm. But it didn’t work like that for me. It took time and effort and mood to get myself turned on.
If I touched myself now where I was most sensitive, it would just hurt.
So instead, I stared up at the ceiling and let myself wonder if I was really going to be able to get through this. Of course the answer was yes. If I could survive having my body shattered to pieces and never again put back together the way it had been, I could survive this damn mess.
I just wished Aleric could be less charming. Or maybe ugly. Anything that would let me hate him a little easier. Because there was nothing worse than feeling sorry for the guy.
Except maybe crushing on him, I supposed.
But I would be goddamned if I ever let that happen.