Page 97 of The Devil's Pawn

“But not for you?”

He regards me out of the side of his eye, a smirk tugging at his lips. “No.”

“Your family doesn’t follow the rules, huh?”

“Only the rules we set.”

I’m beginning to figure out who I’m married to, and it’s a heady kind of power.

Once we reach the freeway, Alexander opens up the throttle. I’m thrown back in my seat. and I scream.

“Oh, my God! This is wild! Go faster.”

He grins. “How fast do you want to go?”

“How fast can she go?”

“Tops out at one-sixty.”

“Wow. You can’t go that fast, though. You’ll get pulled over by the cops.”

Arching the brow I waxed that’s almost grown back, he says, “No, I won’t.”

Oh, that’s right. He has the police in his pocket.

“Go faster.”

He reaches across the center console and rests his hand on my thigh. “Whatever my wife wants.”

I lose my nerve when the speedometer passes one hundred and thirty miles an hour. Alexander laughs, dropping the speed to eighty. As we approach the outskirts of London, the traffic thickens, and he slows almost to a crawl.

“Did we lose Douglas and Steven?” I twist to look out of the back window. The SUV looms behind us, dark and menacing. “Oh, they kept up.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“I’m intrigued by what you would have done.”

Without breaking stride, he deadpans, “Killed them.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“Fine. Fired them.”

“Marginally better.” I laugh, and he does, too.

An hour after leaving the freeway, we pull up to a set of impressive, wrought-iron gates, and a guard approaches.Alexander opens the window, and the guard stands at attention, his spine straight as a pencil.

“Mr. De Vil. Welcome. Everything is ready for you, sir.” The gates open inward, and we drive through.

“Where are we?” I ask, gaping at the pristine gardens, the grass cut with so much precision, the grounds staff must use scissors on it.

“Clarence House. The gardens are usually open to the public in the summer months, but the king owed me a favor, so the space is ours.”

My jaw literally hits the floor. Okay, not literally, but close enough.

“The… theking? As in the King of England?”

“He’s the king of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, but yes.” He confirms it with such nonchalance, as if it’s an everyday occurrence. “Clarence House is one of his London residences, but he’s away on an overseas tour at the moment.”

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