Billionaires: The Royal: The Queen's New Year Secret / Awakened by Her Desert Captor / Twin Heirs to His Throne

Her throat tightened, her palms sweating. She hadn’t thought about that day in years. She had turned it into a lesson, an object, a cautionary tale. But the images of the day, the way that it had smelled, the weather. The sounds her stepfather had made as he bled out on the floor, the screams of her mother when she realized what had been done... Those things she had blocked out. The entire incident had been carefully formed into a morality tale. Something that served to teach, but something she couldn’t feel.

Not anymore.

Use what you need, discard the rest.

“I never wanted passion. Or love. Because...I shouldn’t. I’m afraid of what I might be. What I might become. I think I’ve proven I have the capacity to act recklessly when I’m overtaken by strong emotion,” she said, realizing that to him, the admission must seem ridiculous. For years all he had ever seen was the carefully cultivated cool reserve she had spent the better part of her teenage years crafting from blood and other people’s consequences.

“Tell me,” he said.

She was going to. Her heart was thundering in her ears, a sickening beat that echoed through her body, made her feel weak.

But maybe if she said it, he would understand. Maybe if she said it he would get why what he’d offered had seemed amazing. Why it had felt insufficient. Why she’d chosen to end it instead of asking for more.

“I was walking home from school. I was seventeen at the time. It was a beautiful day. And when I approached the trailer I could already hear them fighting. Not unusual. They fought all the time. My mother was screaming, which she always did. My stepfather was ignoring her. He was drunk, which he very often was.”

She didn’t let herself go back to that house. Not even in her mind. It was gritty and dirty and full of mold. But more than that. The air was heavy. The ghost of faded love lingering and oppressive, a malevolent spirit that choked the life out of everything it touched.

“I didn’t know,” Kairos said.

“I know,” she said. “I didn’t want you to.” It stung her pride, to admit how low she’d started. To admit that she had no idea who her biological father was to a man for whom genetics was everything.

She was a bastard, having a royal baby. It seemed wrong somehow.

You always knew it would be this way. Why are you panicking now that it’s too late?

Because the idea of it was one thing, the reality of it—all of it—her marriage, her past, her life, was different.

She’d spent the past year growing increasingly unhappy. And then Andres had married Zara. Watching the two of them physically hurt. It twisted her stomach to see the way they smiled at each other. Put a bitter, horrible taste in her mouth.

Made her feel a kind of heaviness she hadn’t felt since she’d stood in that grimy little trailer.

“Tell me,” he said, an order, because Kairos didn’t know how to ask for things any other way.

“She kept screaming at him to listen. But he never did. She was so angry. She left the room. I thought she was going to pack, she did that a lot, even though she never left. Or that maybe she’d given up. Gone to take a nap. She did that sometimes too depending on how much she’d had to drink. But she came back. And she had a gun.”

CHAPTER SEVEN (#u1ed2e8ed-f369-5026-8e63-5e349ac46400)

A COCKTAIL OF cold dread slithered down into Kairos’s stomach. He could hardly credit the words that were coming out of his wife’s mouth. Could hardly picture the gentle, sophisticated creature in front of him witnessing anything like this, much less being so tightly connected to it. Tabitha was strong. She possessed a backbone of steel, one he had witnessed on more than one occasion. When it came to handling foreign dignitaries, or members of the government and Petras, she was cool, calm and poised. When it came to organizing his schedule, and defending her position on hot-button issues, she never backed down.

But for all that she possessed that strength, there was something so smooth and fragile about her too. As though she were a porcelain doll, one that he was afraid to play with too roughly. For fear he might break her.

If she were that breakable, you would have shattered her on your desk.

Yes, that was true. He had not thought about her fertility then. Had not taken care with her, as he had always done in the past.

But still, he hadn’t thought in that moment. He simply acted. This revelation challenged perceptions that he had never examined. Not deeply.

“What happened?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level.

“She shot him,” Tabitha said, the words distant and matter-of-fact. Her expression stayed placid, as though she were discussing the contents of the menu for a dinner at the palace. “She was very sorry that she did it. Because he didn’t get back up. He died. And she was sent to jail. I don’t visit her.”

She spoke the last item on the list as though it were the gravest sin of all. As though the worst thing of all was that she had distanced herself from her mother, not that her mother was a murderer.

“You saw all this,” he said, that same shell he had accused her of having wrapping itself around his own veins now, hardening them completely.

“Yes. It was a long time ago,” she said, her voice sounding as if it was coming straight out of that distant past. “Eleven...twelve years ago now? I’m not sure.”

“It doesn’t matter how long ago it was, you still saw it.”

“I don’t like to think about it,” she said, her blue eyes locking with his, looking at him for the first time since she had started telling her gruesome story. “I don’t think you can blame me for that.”

“No, not at all,” he said.

“It wasn’t relevant to our union. Not relevant to whether or not I would be good for the position.”

“Except it clearly was, as I think it is probably related to the action you have taken now.”

She looked down. “I can’t argue with that. I was growing frustrated in our relationship, and I don’t like to give those feelings any foothold on my life. I don’t like to allow them free rein.”

“Surely you don’t think you’re going to find a gun and shoot me?”

“I’m sure my mother didn’t think she would do that either,” Tabitha said, starting to pace, her hands clasped in front of her. She was picking at the polish on her fingernails, something he had never seen her do before. It was then he noticed that she wasn’t wearing her ring. How had he missed it before?

Perhaps you were too wrapped up in imagining those fingers wrapped around your member to notice.

He gritted his teeth. Yes, that was the problem. Whatever had exploded between them was stealing his ability to think clearly.

“Where is your ring?”

She stopped thinking and looked at her fingernails. “I took it off.”

“It was very expensive,” he said, though that was not his concern at all, and he wasn’t sure why he was pretending that it was.

“I know. But it is also mine. That was part of our prenuptial agreement if you recall.”

“I don’t need the money, I was just concerned something might have happened to it.”

“It’s in a safe. In a bank. It’s fine. But there is no point in me wearing it when I’m not your wife. I would hate to start gossip in the press.”

“We already have.”

“Imagine the gossip if they knew my past as well.”

“Enough. No one is going to find out. Because I will not tell. Anyway, it is not a reflection on you.”

“Isn’t it? My genetics. Our child’s genetics.”

“If blood determined everything I would be a tyrant or absent.” He didn’t like to speak of his parents. Talking about his father, and his rages, was much simpler than talking about his mother, who was not there at all. But either way, it was a topic he preferred not to broach.