Page 1 of The Wanted Prince

CHAPTER 1

ALESSANDRO

Istood with one foot in my dressing room, one foot on my balcony, the breeze in my face. Behind me, my brothers were messing around, tying each other’s ties. Securing their medals. We’d all done our time in Santaviedo’s Royal Army, but only Carlo had stayed in once his service was done. Dom was in law school, and I worked with the Treasury. I had work to do, in fact. Whole stacks of numbers. But tonight was our father’s night, and I couldn’t miss it.

Carlo came up behind me. “What are you doing?”

Nothing wasn’t an answer, in Carlo’s book. He had no concept of not doing a thing. So I gave him an answer that wasn’t quite true, but at the same time, it wasn’t a lie.

“Watching the guests arrive.”

“The guests, huh?” said Dom, squeezing between us. He nudged me in the ribs. “Any guest in particular?”

I shouldered him off me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dom drew himself up, more smirk than man. “Only, I heard the Cardonas were coming. And Laura Cardona’s in from New York.”

I wasn’t about to dignify that with a response. Of course I liked Laura. We’d been friends all our lives. But it wasn’t like I’d been carrying some torch.

“Look, the Calatravas,” said Carlo, coming to my rescue. He pointed down at the long, curving drive. Sure enough, the Calatravas had just arrived, three generations in three long, sleek cars. They all crowded around little Dora Calatrava, though I guessed she wasn’t so little anymore. She had to be eighteen, nineteen maybe. Her aunts all swooped in to touch up her hair.

“Best steer clear of her tonight,” said Carlo, with a chuckle. “Unless you want to wind up engaged.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” said Dom. He’d pulled out his phone. Now he slanted it my way to show me Dora’s picture, splashed across the society page. “Not half bad, huh?”

“Too young for me.”

“She wants to be a princess,” said Dom, his eyes gone all dreamy. “And I’ll be her prince. Get her on my dance card.”

Carlo cuffed him up the back of his head. The two of them tussled, then broke apart.

“You’re a lech,” Carlo said.

“I’m a romantic!”

“Oh, no, Father Time.” I pointed down at a gleaming coach-and-four, a baroque throwback that could only belong to one man: Riccardo Montañez, the Duke of Salcí. Our great-great uncle, and Father’s bane. The duke was so old no one knew his exact age, except he’d passed a hundred some years ago. Every sentence he uttered began with ’In my day… ,” and ended with some indictment of modern life.

“Where’s that new wife of his?” Carlo leaned forward.

“Didn’t you hear?” Dom’s smirk stretched wide. “She met some young guy and filed for divorce.” He stooped like an old man and bumped his voice up an octave. “’In my day, only men could file for divorce. If your woman got tired of you, she had an affair.’”

The duke stepped down from his carriage, ancient and frail. And completely alone, I saw. I felt bad for him. All his friends had passed by now, and all three of his children. His grandkids had largely fled overseas. We were about it for him, when it came to family.

“We should say hi to him,” I said. “Let him tell us some stories.”

Carlo shuddered, but he nodded. Dom pretended not to hear.

“Speaking of affairs,” he said, “did you hear about the Profazios?”

I tuned out the gossip, not wanting to hear. Tonight was about Father, and his upcoming milestones — seventy years old, and fifty as king. He’d succeeded his own father at barely twenty, and ruled with a fair hand since that day. One day, one of us would take on that mantle, whichever of us he deemed most deserving. Not simply the eldest, as one might expect — in our gleaming city-state, we had more sense than that. No dissolute eldest child would rule by default.

Dom nudged me again. “Dare you to dance with her.”

I scowled. “Who?”

“Laura Cardona. Come on, one dance. You know you want to.”

Carlo cuffed him again. “What are you trying to do, get me killed? You start another civil war, that’s my blood on your hands.”

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