Chapter Twelve #2
‘Because my great-grandmother was third cousin to the last king of Reykland by marriage if that helps?’ Her captor peered hopefully at her, triggering another hysterical bubble.
She swallowed it just in time. ‘How long was I unconsc…asleep?’
‘Five hours,’ he snapped grumpily, then shrugged. ‘I misjudged the dosage, but you’re awake now. We can get on—’
‘May I have some water? I—I have a headache.’
Annoyance flashed over his face again, then he looked out his window. Following his gaze, fear filled her when she saw the shack. ‘I have to go inside. I can’t bring you in, just yet. It has to be right. Will you wait here. Behave yourself?’
At her hurried nod, he opened his door, and went into the shack.
Alone, she sucked in another breath, tried to think rationally. Five hours. More than enough time for Valenti to know she was missing. Her spirits plummeted. Because she knew it would be yet another reason to confirm he was right to write her off.
Maybe this was what was required for him to wash his hands of her completely? To absolve himself of all responsibility?
Lotte swallowed down the lump of self-pity and looked around.
The back doors were on child lock when she tried the handle, but he hadn’t locked the front. Dragging herself upright, she half sobbed in thanks that he hadn’t tied her legs.
Without a second thought, she threw herself into the gap between the seats, relief surging when the door opened at her push.
She shoved it further and dove through it, yelping when she landed roughly on her hip.
Ignoring the stab of agony, she clambered up and raced from the car and the dwelling that didn’t look much more than a hunter’s shack.
Terror tore through her at the angry bellow behind her. She didn’t look back.
The road leading away from the shack was dark and unpaved. Rocks dug into her bare feet as she fled, blind in the inky darkness.
All too soon she heard pounding footsteps.
The sob she’d tried to stem finally broke through, tears blurring her vision. Angrily she blinked them away. She wouldn’t let him catch her.
She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.
Her frantic thought screeched to a halt as headlights flared to life, in front of her.
She screamed.
Then the world turned upside down.
In the agonising seconds it took for his brain to connect with his feet, Valenti sat behind the wheel of his SUV, frozen in terror.
After roaming the Cartanian countryside for six hours, the sight of Lotte barefoot, running for her life, was almost too much to assimilate.
Perhaps she was a beautiful ghost come to haunt him.
Her scream tore him from his stupor. Just in time for him to watch her tumble head over heels, landing in a heap six feet from the front of his bumper.
Por favor, Dios. Por favor. Por favor.
He was reciting, pleading with the Almighty as he almost tore the door off its hinges to get to her, peripherally registering his team wrestling down the man who should’ve been behind bars, awaiting trial for stalking the woman Valenti loved.
The man some corrupt judge had set free on bail in the middle of the night ten days ago and managed to keep secret from the authorities through a series of fraudulent paperwork.
A criminal and judge Valenti swore to destroy if it was the last thing he did.
He stumbled to where Lotte lay winded, her chest rising and falling with gulping sobs until it stilled when her eyes landed on him.
More tears filled her eyes. She blinked them away, but fresh ones surged.
‘Valenti?’ she whispered.
His hands shook frantically as he reached for her, cutting the ropes binding her wrists.
‘Sí, it’s me, litla.’ He barely recognised his own voice.
Barely recognised the man he’d been before that race to Reykland weeks ago.
The man who’d been filled with guilt and duty and so much self-righteous bitterness he could perform three dozen TED Talks on it and not run out of subject matter.
And all for what? So he could remain on that lofty perch of sanctimonious hubris? Where everyone could point to his life-long sacrifice as a beacon of piety to be followed? While he remained silent and anguished and deeply alone?
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked uselessly. Because of course she was hurt. Physically, no doubt. But definitely emotionally. Because hadn’t he also made everyone around him suffer, if only by making them feel inferior to his mighty self-sacrifice?
Even his mother had learned to pick her moments around him very carefully after he’d returned home after Helga’s death, not wanting to be seen to be vilifying Cartana’s superhero in case she angered the palace and had her privileges revoked.
He’d secretly welcomed and celebrated that position, silently said nothing as the majority of her vitriol was redirected to his twin.
Oh yes, he had a lot to be ashamed about.
But most of the reparations were owed to the beautiful creature lying on her back in the dirt at his feet. His heart. His precious soul.
‘N-nothing that won’t heal, eventually. I hope,’ she said, her voice shaken. Soft. Warm despite everything she’d been through. ‘You came for me.’
A thick, pain-filled rumble swelled in his chest. ‘Too late. Far too late, litla.’
She started to shake her head, then winced. The rumble tore free. Charging him into scooping her up carefully. Oh so carefully. His whole body wracked in tremors as he strode to his SUV.
A bodyguard hurried to throw the back door open.
Valenti climbed in and tucked her into his lap, his senses screaming when he saw the gashes and grazes on her beautiful skin.
‘Take us to the hospital. Now,’ he barked at the driver. To the head of his security who stood at the window, he snarled, ‘Him you take to the palace dungeon. Keglar will face Cartanian justice. Is that understood?’
The car was moving before his man executed his salute.
His Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively as he stared back down at her. With a groan torn from his soul, he buried his face in her hair. ‘Forgive me. Por favor. Forgive me.’
Her fingers curled around his nape, dug in, holding him. Always holding him closer than he deserved. ‘There’s no need—’
‘No, there’s every need,’ he insisted. ‘I minimised everything you said, everything you felt because…’ He paused, the weight of it too much to handle.
‘For the first time in my life, I met a challenge I couldn’t overcome.
This thing…this beautiful thing you shoved in front of me and forced me to acknowledge.
It terrified me when it shouldn’t have. It was why I reacted the way I did when you came here three years ago. Why I’ve been running since.’
Her head slowly lifted. ‘What are you saying, Valenti?’
‘What you said at the palace…at the cabin, it was all true. I have been hiding behind my guilt and my tragedy and my bitterness. It was…safer that way.’ A mirthless smile twitched his lips.
‘I will move mountains so you never find out, but I can attest that people will leave you alone when they believe you live permanently in a state of pious sorrow and miserable self-sacrifice.’
She was shaking her head. ‘But no more? Please, Valenti, no more. Helga would’ve hated for you to live your life like that in her name.’
‘I know. A week and a half with you in a cabin brought more colour and bliss into my life than the previous three decades, Lotte.’ He buried his face in her shoulder once more, breathing her in simply because she was life. A life he’d almost thrown away.
‘Do you…do you still want to be left alone?’ A sheen of tears filmed her eyes again. ‘Because I can’t bear to hope for…anything if you—’
‘I need you, litla,’ he confessed in a raw rasp, shaking his head at the sheer simplicity of it now he knew. Now he recognised that no alternative would do. ‘To keep me living. To keep me sane. To remind me of the beauty in the world.’
The motorcade screamed into the courtyard of the private state-of-the-art royal hospital and relief poured through him. But when he went to step out, she stopped him.
‘I can’t go in, Valenti. Not until you tell me…not until I know.’
He stared into her beautiful blue eyes and swallowed.
‘No more hesitation, Lotte. No more hiding. I love you. So very much. I’m yours.
’ A breath shuddered out of her. ‘As arrogant as it sounds, I’ve been yours since Helga implored me to keep you safe.
I intended to keep that promise long after you’d turned twenty-five.
But now I intend to keep you as my wife.
My lover. The mother of my children. If you’ll have me?
’ He leaned in close and brushed the tip of her nose with his.
‘I should also add that I will set you free if you wish it, but you will never be free of me. So really, it’s in your best interest to—’
Soft, lean fingers brushed over his mouth, stopping his words.
‘I believe you. Even the arrogant part. Which is why it helps that I love you too.’ More tears spilled from her eyes, and he brushed them away the better to see the emotions surging free.
‘You will never need to set me free, Valenti. I’m right where I want to be. With you. Loving you. Forever.’
The surge took hold of him then too, and everything and everyone, including the team of doctors who waited impatiently beyond the doors, faded away. ‘Dios mío. I love you, Lotte.’
Her throat moved. ‘I’m so glad you’re mine, Valenti. I hoped and prayed…’
He anointed her gift of love with a kiss drawn deep from his soul, the place he now recognised had been feeding him the sacred emotion all along. And when they came up for air, he braced his forehead against hers. ‘We have to go inside now, mi amor. I have to make sure you’re well.’
She looked from him to the hovering team, a small, breathtaking smile curving her lips. ‘I’ll come inside only because I know you won’t rest until I do. But I have a feeling we’ll leave here with a little more than we’ve bargained for, Prince Valenti.’
True enough, once her cuts and bruises had been thoroughly tended to and her blood tests came back with no adverse effects, Lotte took his hand. Valenti’s breath caught at the near-celestial happiness in her eyes.
‘Is there anything else, doctor?’ she asked without taking her eyes off him.
The petite female doctor looked up from her notes, her professional demeanour slipping into a wide smile.
‘Oh yes. Your Highness, Miss Lillegard, please allow me to be the first to congratulate you both. You’re going to be parents.’
Valenti was on his knees, attempting to withstand the unrelenting waves of happiness drowning him when his brothers and their wives walked in.
Still dumbfounded, he allowed Lotte, the love of his life and the mother of his unborn child, to give them the news.
He kept swallowing, his eyes riveted on her, only her, as his brothers clasped his shoulders and enthusiastically gave their own congratulations.
‘I feel like a toast about wild oats and mommy issues is called for right about now,’ Teo muttered.
‘No, hermano. It isn’t. It really, truly is not,’ Azar groaned.
They all broke into laughter.
And as Valenti finally rose to gather his heart into his arms, he knew the life of suffering and guilt was behind him.
Only love existed in his future with Lotte.
Keep reading for an excerpt from GREEK BOSS TO HATE by Michelle Smart.