CHAPTER 17 #3
Their bedroom, Lara had informed him, when she’d had him dragged upstairs by the new Cavalieri guards that had taken over the palace. I want this to work between us, Alex. You’ll come to your senses soon enough.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he answered. “I haven’t seen Daniela since she left the castle.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Lara’s eyes flashed with rage. “We have video of you and Serafina leaving her apartment building. You took her somewhere. I know you did. She was badly injured. She couldn’t have dematerialized far.”
“And you would know she was injured how, exactly?”
Out of the corner of one eye, he saw Lara signal to the guard behind him. After days of beatings, he knew what was coming, and yet he still flinched when the force of the blow knocked both him and the chair to the ground.
The carpet dug into his cheek as Lara stood before him, designer snakeskin pumps unmoving. He didn’t react. There was nothing to be won by goading her, and he’d known that.
“Get him up.”
He refused to make eye contact with Lara as she paced before his fireplace, face hard with fury. Things weren’t going to plan. She’d failed to kill Dani. Now he was refusing to be cowed.
“She’s a sickness, one you can’t get out of your head. I see that now. If the only way for us to be together is for me to get rid of her, I’ll hunt her to the ends of the sector.”
Now Alex wondered, would Lara have gone so far as to engineer the explosion at Cavalieri Industries, putting hundreds of lives at risk just to eliminate Dani and make it look like a faked terrorist attack? How had he so greatly underestimated the monster she truly was?
When he still refused to look at her, Lara gripped his jaw, bending to forcibly kiss his lips.
“You’re making me do this, husband. I don’t want things to be this way between us.
” She tapped the mating mark at his wrist. “We’ve been searching the city for nearly a full day.
No one can find her body or that of her sisters.
If Dani Girard were dead, I would expect the mark to have faded.
” Straightening, she pointed to the guards. “Hold him down.”
Going to the hearth, she selected an iron poker and placed it into the flames.
“Lara,” Alex began, voice softening as dread filled him. She was insane. “Please don’t hurt me.”
“I’m sorry, Alex. I hate that you’re making me do this.
But I don’t see any other way. You’re completely obsessed with that girl.
” She swiped at her eyes. “Everything was so good between us before she ruined this. Ruined us. But it can be good again. I know it.” Lifting the red-hot poker from the grate, she came towards him.
“Lara, don’t,” Alex said sharply. “This won’t make me love you.”
“You’ll thank me for this later,” she whispered. “I know you will. We’ll finally be together.”
And then, as a third guard held him down, she pressed the searing metal to his flesh.
Alex screamed, the world mercifully going black.
Alex sat in a chair in the formal ballroom as the hair and makeup team finished putting the final touches on him. Lara had already decided they would be doing the announcement seated on a loveseat, which she thought looked cozier.
He’d hoped the upcoming interview might provide an opportunity to escape. Surely Lara wouldn’t expect him to go on camera in filthy, bloody clothes? He only needed seconds with the cursed cuffs off, and he could scatter himself into smoke and escape this hell.
But just when he’d dared to hope, a needle jabbed him in the side of the neck and the world went gray around him.
He awoke in an itchy blue sweater he’d always hated, his wrist bandaged where Lara had burned him. Judas was there, observing his torture with dispassionate eyes.
Alex studied his father. His face was definitely paler than usual. Had he lost weight? Was there any chance Isabella might have been right about the cancer?
“Is it true?” he asked. “Are you really sick?”
The king smiled thinly. “Always so determined to believe the worst of me, Alexander?”
“That’s not an answer.”
Ignoring him, his father continued, “It’s unfortunate that things had to turn out this way, but hopefully with time, your obsession with that girl will come to an end and you and Lara can move forward.
Lara will be a strong queen. You need that.
You’ve always been too soft, much like your mother.
This family’s legacy is too important to squander.
We’re seeing greater dissent since the bombings.
Law enforcement hasn’t been able to quell the protestors.
The markets continue to fall. We need stability.
And the announcement that we are moving forward with this marriage union will provide that. ”
“You actually think people give a damn about what we’re doing in our gilded ballrooms, dressing up in fine silks they’ll never be able to touch and drinking champagne that costs more than they make in a month, when their families are starving?
” Alex laughed bitterly. “We can still turn this around, Father. It isn’t too late. ”
But his father merely shook his head, eyes bearing the disappointment he knew all too well.
“Here’s how this is going to go,” Lara said, coming to sit beside him on the loveseat.
“After I talk, you’ll read the statement I’ve prepared.
And you will smile while we announce our engagement to the sector.
If you don’t, if you force me to tape retakes because you want to draw this out, the hundred prisoners we rounded up off the streets following your little insurrection will be executed, and another one hundred for every twenty-four hours that you refuse to comply. ”
She nodded across the room, behind the cameras, where Henri sat tied to a chair. A guard held a dagger to his throat.
“And we will start with your closest friend.”
Alex met his bodyguard’s eyes. Henri was in even worse shape than he was.
At least the guards had been told to mostly avoid his face in order to keep him camera ready.
With fae magic in the cuffs draining his blood’s self-healing properties, Henri had to be feeling every bruise and cut and burn, just like Alex was.
I’m sorry, Alex mouthed, just before Lara gripped his face, forcing him to look at her.
“We have to put your indiscretion behind us, Alex. This can be our chance for a fresh start. I want a life with you. A future. I think we should try for a baby right away. Once the sector sees that we’re expecting, they’ll be overjoyed for us.”
Alex swallowed, feeling bile rise in his throat. “Don’t you think we should give it a bit of time?”
Lara shook her head. “It will be exactly what the people need to move on from that… other story the media was so obsessed with. Our love will be what people are celebrating as they ring in the new year.”
Alex stared at Henri, at the knife pressed to his throat. He thought of Daniela, who would surely be watching, and knew he had no choice.
“I’ll do it.”
Lara smiled, and he was reminded of ice forming at the edges of the windowpanes on the darkest days of winter. She squeezed his hand.
In the depths of her depraved mind, did she actually believe any of this was real? That he could ever want her after she’d tortured and imprisoned him?
“This doesn’t have to be difficult.” Her makeup team approached, applying a fresh touch of powder to her cheeks.
The camera crew arranged their hands with the addition of a blanket, so that it looked as if he were merely leaning towards her, wanting to hold her hand with both of his, rather than being held her prisoner.
The fucking irony.
The lights glowed brighter. Lara gave her glossy brown hair one final shake before facing the cameras.
“Alex and I know that you’ve all been very concerned for us the past few days given the news reports that have surfaced.
I can now confirm that there was a coordinated terrorist attack carried out against several sites that were bombed throughout the sector.
When our intelligence sources began to close in on the aberrant organizers of these attacks, they revealed a shocking discovery. ”
Lara looked down, pausing for a moment, and it took every bit of press training Alex had ever been forced to suffer through over the years to keep his face composed for Henri’s sake, rather than throw up.
“These attacks were led by Daniela Girard. She is an aberrant spy whose goal from the start was to insert herself into the royal palace in order to gain access to Alexander and the king. We are fortunate that there weren’t more injuries.
Alex and I are asking for the public’s help in finding her.
She must be brought to justice before any more lives are threatened. ”
Lara turned to him, smiling as she pretended to brush away a tear.
“One blessing has come from this betrayal. Alexander has asked me to be his wife. I will lead the sector forward into a better future as your queen.”
Alexander looked at the knife pressed to Henri’s throat, thought of the tears that must surely be streaming down Dani’s face as she watched.
I’m so sorry. Forgive me.
He bent to kiss Lara’s cheek. “And I couldn’t be happier.”