Reckoning Part I
Bright sunlight filters through the gauze covered windows, illuminating every perfect, beautiful line of my sleeping wife.
Saints above. My wife. And the mother of my child.
My family is going to have a royal conniption.
Queen Therese, who also happens to be my mother, known so well for her patience and calm, might even yell. A prince simply does not elope. Not even the prince who is neither the heir, nor the spare.
For his own grandson to do so? No doubt a criminal offence in the old king”s eyes. His and my father will be furious, but father cannot claim I did not tell him I had no interest in his plans for my matrimonial future. He”s certain I will change my mind and do my duty.
But my greatest duty is to the woman I love and the child she carries.
So, even knowing the storm I face – we face – I will never regret that so very precious ceremony on the beach.
I move to caress her shoulder with a barely there touch, not to wake her, only to feel the satin smoothness of mi amate”s skin under my hand.
A thunderous pounding on the villa”s front door in the other room aborts the movement, my fingers a centimeter from Tanzi”s shoulder.
A furious, deep voice shouts in Spanish.
The windows open to allow the cross breezes also allow the voice to penetrate all the way to the peace of our bedroom.
Tanzi sits straight up in bed, her eyes going comically wide as she turned her head side to side. ”What? Who...papa?”
”Constanza Eleanor Menendez, open this door immediamente or I will break it down!”
There”s the mumble of a woman”s voice, but I cannot make out her words.
”I will not call her Scorsolini. I have not even met this man who dares to steal my daughter away!”
There”s no difficulty hearing that.
”He”s loud,” I observe.
”And he”ll only get louder if I don”t calm him down.” Tanzi leaps out of the bed, rushes around the room grabbing clothes, but gives up on trying to get her wedding dress on and grabs the sheet off the bed instead.
Leaving me with no covering at all.
Wrapping the sheet around herself, she runs for the door. ”Papa calm down, you”re upsetting mom. You know you are. She hates it when you yell.”
Oh, no. My wife is not tearing through the house to appease another man. Not even her father.
I jump up and grab my chinos, dragging them on as I follow Tanzi at speed.
I reach her just as she goes to open the door.
Grabbing her arm, I shake my head. ”Go back and dress. I will let them in.”
Pure panic glows in her storm gray eyes. ”No. You don”t understand. I need—”
Another loud knock sounds on the door accompanied by a demand for it to be opened.
Tanzi”s sound of distress convinces me to open the door, not her father”s clearly increasing ire.
I gently pushed her backward so I stand between my new wife and the furious man on the other side. Then I unlock and open the door in one movement.
The group of people are so eerily familiar, they could be a contingent of my own family. A tall man who is clearly Tanzi”s father vibrates with incandescent fury. Beside him stands an older, stunning version of the woman I married – Tanzi”s mother. On either side of them are two men about my age and a full contingent of security.
We are significantly outnumbered and it does not matter. I draw my royalty around me like the suit I”m not wearing and step back. ”Come in. Signore e Signora Menendez, I presume.”
I could use their Spanish titles, but that would establish a different power dynamic than the one I want. The one in which they recognized me as the primary man in Tanzi”s life now.
Tanzi”s father glowers, making no move to enter the house after all his demands to be let inside. ”And you are?”
His wife slaps his arm. ”You know very well who he is, Miguel. He”s your daughter”s husband and if you don”t want to alienate her, I suggest you get your temper under control.”
Miguel”s gaze slides past me to Tanzi and a slight tightening of his mouth says maybe his wife”s warning has been heard and heeded.
Tanzi”s brothers stand there with identical looks of disdain on their faces. I return it with interest. They are upsetting my wife and it is their job to protect her.
Full stop.
”Mom,” sounds from behind me, the single word expressing happiness, anxiety and desperation.
It”s the tiny quaver that has me turning around to see my wife. Tanzi is blinking back tears and looking too damn vulnerable.
Ignoring the people behind me, I reach for her. ”All will be well, dolce bella. We knew this moment was coming.”
We just didn”t expect it this quickly.
”Don”t make my daughter promises you may not be able to keep,” Miguel threatens.
My arms firmly around my trembling wife, I turn back to her parents. ”Any promise I make to your daughter I will honor; all vows I have made to her are permanent.”
Some of the fury in Miguel”s eyes banks and I realize the man had been worried for his daughter. But why?
”You two need to get dressed immediately,” he says, his tone only marginally more civil. ”I convinced your father to allow me to collect you, but you are facing a storm of epic proportions when we reach the palace. I will not allow my daughter to be hit by its lightning. You understand me?”
”Palace?” Tanzi asks. She tips her head back to meet my eyes. ”Rio, what is my dad talking about?”
Miguel replies before I can. ”Tanzi, meet your husband. Principe Vittorio Micheli Scorsolini.”
”You”re a prince?” she asks in shock.
”And you are a billionaire”s daughter.” My brain is firing on all cylinders and I recognize Miguel Menendez from the financial news.
Incredibly, she blushes. ”Um, yeah about that.”
I shake my head. ”No. It doesn”t matter. I fell in love with you, Tanzi Scorsolini.” I use her new last name on purpose, to drill home to her family that she is mine now. ”And you fell in love with me, not my title.”
”But you”re a prince?”
”Heir to the throne of Isole dei Re,” her father answers again.
Earning a blistering look from me. ”I”m capable of speaking for myself.”
”Really? Then why is it that my daughter is not aware that one day she will be queen?” Miguel looked at Tanzi, one brow raised. ”And you had issues with taking over my company.”
The temptation to clock the billionaire has my hands clenching into fists.
”Don”t,” Tanzi said softly.
I smile down at her.
”Of course not and you won”t be queen.” I glare at her father again. ”I am third in line to the throne. An heir, not the heir. That would be my sister, Elena.”
”But the news said—”
”Don”t,” Tanzi”s mother says with enough force her son stops speaking.
His meaning is clear though. Somehow, our elopement is already public knowledge. The curses running through my brain are not nice.
I focus on mi amate again. ”I was going to tell you, before—”
”Before you found out I was pregnant with your heir?” she asks with a rueful smile.
Her mother gasps. Her father lets loose some creative invective in Spanish.
Tanzi ignores them both. ”Before you whisked me off to marry you so no one, not even a king, could stop us?”
She understands. Relief flows through me in a near debilitating wave. ”Sì. I was going to tell you everything today.”
”You do not think you should have told her before you married her?” Miguel demands.
”Forgive me, please,” I say to Tanzi, refusing to acknowledge the Spanish billionaire.
”Yes, Rio. I love you and there is nothing to forgive. We both wanted to be loved for who we are, not where we come from. Our future is a little more complicated than I thought though.”
”A little.” I smile down at her, letting my love shine in the eyes only she can see.
Her return smile tells me everything coming is worth it.
”We do need to get back on the plane. The royal family”s PR team is working with ours, but we need to face this news with a united front.” Surprisingly, that comes from Tanzi”s mother.
”Amber, as always, you are the voice of intelligent reason, mi amor.”
”I”m going to be a grandmother,” the voice of reason says in an emotion laden voice to her spouse.
”They”re kissing. That should give us enough time to shower and dress anyway,” Tanzi says dryly, looking past my shoulder.