Chapter Six
“You…you can’t do that.”
Livia gaped in horror as a faint smile curved Gustav’s lips. “I can and I will.”
She shook her head, and his smile took a more sinister turn.
Was this some sort of test? If so, she was failing it miserably.
But right now, she didn’t care. He was going to rip away all the prestige of their marriage that had been at the center of the deal with her father.
Without it, her entire rationale for going through with this marriage would disappear.
If she was embroiled in a scandal, her mother would follow through with her veiled threat, and her sister would be paired off with someone else of royal blood “for her own good.” Even worse, now that Livia was married to a man with his own scorch-the-earth revenge agenda, she had taken away her best tool to help her sister.
Gustav’s expression hardened in the face of the shock that was almost certainly written across her face.
“Of course, there’s a good chance that my father’s credibility will be rattled enough that Parliament will not bend to his demands, especially since I am now the one who will control the money the country needed, but I wanted you to be prepared for all the possibilities. ”
He gave her an arrogant smirk.
“But…” Livia was having trouble forming a coherent sentence. “If you publicly accuse your father and brother of anything underhanded, there will be a scandal. You will destabilize the entire royal family, and then…”
He was watching her very closely. “And then what?”
She was cornered, and his ruthless stare suggested he would take full advantage of her position.
She had almost kissed this man just moments ago.
Nostalgia and her desire had almost lulled her into thinking that somehow, now that they were married, the danger would go away.
But now it was worse, because she was tied to a man bent on destroying everything around him.
“This is my life you’re toying with,” she pleaded. “How can you be so ruthless?”
“I am what my past has made me, Livia. Every single part of it.”
There it was again, the sting of their past together. For a moment, she saw a flash of hurt and anger before he reined it back in behind an arrogant smile.
Her own anger broke through the shock. “And now you’ll have the satisfaction of having power over everyone who you think has harmed you?”
He tipped his head a little, as if he were considering her question. Then he nodded. “Yes, it is quite satisfying.”
This was what he’d wanted all along. To get his revenge. To tear everyone down, including her. She shuddered at that thought.
Just calm down and think this through, she told herself.
Livia had been dealt enough unexpected blows in her life to know that these situations were pivotal, and too often in the past she had failed to stand up to the moment.
Right now, for example, her instincts told her to run away, the way she used to sneak out when she was back at school, just to be free.
This had led her to Gustav in the first place, which felt like a dark, taunting twist of irony.
But right now, they were literally in the middle of the sea.
Even if the open waters that surrounded them had not made that option impossible, it was an escape, not a solution.
Not when the strings of her life were being pulled by others, and it was no longer just her own life that was at stake.
Livia had to fight back, even when the situation seemed hopeless. Especially when it did.
“So let me get this straight,” she said, trying to steady her voice. “You’re angry at your father and brother for wielding their power over you, so you are going to seize that power and wield it over them.”
“Yes,” he said, unfazed by the accusation. “But unlike either of them, I am doing it for the good of my country.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Causing a scandal is the best thing for your country?”
“I’ve tried other routes, and nothing has worked.
My father does what he wants, but he will sacrifice a lot to tame bad publicity.
” His jaw had hardened, and his body was alive with tension.
“All my life, I have been bad publicity for him in one form or another. Though he found an illegitimate son harder to keep quiet than a less tangible mistake.”
Livia flinched at the word mistake and felt a pang of sympathy for him, despite her frustration.
Both Adele’s and her own experiences of being treated as fourth-class citizens at the Alpine Institute had shaped the way she saw the world—including how she saw Gustav’s position.
Gustav, too, was shaped by pain and anger of going through life being treated like a mistake by his father.
“You’re planning to overthrow the king, aren’t you?” The question came out more like an accusation.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he snapped.
Livia wasn’t sure if this was a denial or just a dismissal.
“Then tell me why you think it’s okay to destroy my life when you hate your father for doing the same thing to you,” she demanded.
“There is no other way,” he roared. “I will not rationalize wasting the country’s money on lavish parties or on remodeling a wing of the castle, all on the flimsy grounds of entertaining foreign dignitaries.”
“But how do you know that whatever you have planned isn’t going to throw the country from the proverbial frying pan into the fire?”
“It’s not,” he said, and his voice was hard and flat. “Again, you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Basically, your answer is ‘Because I said so’? Because the prince has spoken and that makes it true?”
He scowled, but he didn’t deny it. But the longer the silence hung between then, the more she felt his anger shift to brooding.
He looked so much more like the boy she knew in the forest all those years ago, someone who worried about how his actions would affect others.
He never would have been so arrogant as to think that his vengeance trumped everything—and everyone.
Teenage Gustav had been capable of compassion.
Had he lost that part of himself in the power struggle that he had been made a part of?
Her breath caught in her chest, and she felt a kernel of a connection that went beyond lust. She was approaching this completely wrong. She needed to find the part of him that was still able to listen. It was something she could turn into a path forward.
“Don’t you see how this vengeance will only hurt you in the end?” she pleaded. “The bitterness and anger will hollow you out. I watched it happen to my father, and I don’t…”
She couldn’t handle watching it happen to Gustav. There was a lump forming in the back of her throat, but she steeled herself against the feelings that were rising up inside her. Not now. She had to focus on getting them all out of this mess—Adele, her and Gustav.
Livia searched inside herself for the empathy that she had felt for the seventeen-year-old boy in the woods, back when she still thought he was looking for a way out of a life based on prestige.
When she’d thought he wanted to find something real.
That boy she could reach back then. The problem was that he could reach her, too. Still, it was the only thing she had.
“When I heard about your expulsion from school, I tried to find you.”
He stilled. “My father made sure I was far from the public eye. He had someone delete my phone number, my social media. Everything.”
“I should not have cut you off like that,” she said, trying not to let the guilt take over. “I wanted to explain. To…apologize.”
Her voice wavered. She hadn’t made his choices, she reminded herself. Still, she could have handled it a lot better.
“And why would that matter after all these years? We both know how it ended,” he said, and the coldness of his voice made her shiver.
She forced herself to push that warning away.
“I think you’re punishing me for the way I handled the end of our relationship and for my involvement with your brother.” She flushed at the reference to Edvin. “If I am to be punished, shouldn’t I be allowed to at least present my case?”
The boat engine hummed, narrowing their world. No one else was in sight, and it felt like just the two of them sitting below the puffy clouds with the gentle waves of the sea spreading out on all sides. It would have been the perfect day if Gustav wasn’t toying with her life.
He was quiet, so she added, “Would it hurt to wait a little longer before you drop the final bomb?”
He didn’t answer right away, and her heart leaped in her chest. Maybe she could buy time to come up with a new plan. She shifted, trying to ignore how close he was, how distracting his scent was. It would be so easy to just give in to what her body was begging for.
“And what do I get in return for granting your wish?” he asked.
“What do you want?”
His eyes raked down her body, telling her exactly what he wanted. A shiver of dark pleasure rushed through her, so different from the dreamy, innocent desire she’d experienced as a teenager. This was something different, something new and darker.
“The pleasure of the company of my wife is its own reward, of course,” he said with a knowing smile, and her cheeks flushed from something she chose to call embarrassment. “I would enjoy the pleasure of listening to your case as you lay next to me in our marriage bed.”
His voice had a hint of mockery in it; she could hear both the temptation and the danger in it.
“It sounds like you are picturing more than a story.”
“I don’t need to take, Livia. You know that.” His laugh was rich and dark.
No, he would not take from her anything she was not willing to give. And yet the danger was in how much she would be willing to give this man. A gust of wind blew across her body, and the material of her dress scraped over her skin in a sensual caress.
She swallowed. “Fine. I will tell you the story in bed.”