Page 11 of Crowned For The King's Secret

He’d promised himself as a young man that he would never revisit the sins of his grandfather, leading the country into destruction. A pretender and his wife murdering his family and stealing the throne. Then there’d beenher.A broken condom. His acceptance of a woman looking at him with her sad eyes, telling him not to worry, that she couldn’t fall pregnant.

Lies, all lies.

The burn of bile rose to his throat. In that moment, in that suite in a private club he hadn’t visited since, his past had been forgotten, as had his future. All he’d wanted was a moment to be Sandro, not King Alessandro Nicolai Baldoni. He and Victoria had crashed into each other, destroying themselves on the jagged rocks of their passion. Nothing had mattered to him, caught in the maelstrom of it all. For that night, he’d never wanted to escape.

It had been a profound disappointment to wake in the morning to find her gone, with only a note and a kiss in lipstick left for him.

Thank you.

He’d held on to those thanks for nearly nineteen months before he’d heard the news. That he had a child who’d been hidden from him. From that moment on, his security team had worked tirelessly to strip Victoria’s life bare, finding payments to her from an offshore account. Likely money stolen from Santa Fiorina’s treasury by his cousin before his exile. They had begun putting together a retrieval plan for the child who may not be his, but who Sandro wouldneverallow to fall into the evil clutches of his bastard relative, to be used as some puppet in a game Sandro was sure was some effort to regain the throne.

‘Da!’

It was a repeat of what he’d said only moments earlier, but was more strident now. Nicolai’s eyes were wide and blue, his plump little arm outstretched, grasping for something...or someone.

Him.

‘What’s he saying?’ Sandro asked, his throat closing over at the emotion of seeing a child he knew even without DNA testing was his. A clone of the one photo of himself he had as a little boy. One of the only photographs his godparents had saved the night they fled in the darkness.

Victoria took a step forward, then hesitated. Looking up at him because, whilst he’d remembered her as being tall in heels, without them he still dwarfed her. Her skin pale and waxy. Wearing an old T-shirt that moulded her upper body. Black leggings encasing her legs leaving little to the imagination. Yet there was a fragility about her, until he looked at her eyes and all he saw there was tigress, a resolve that he was tasked with breaking today. He’d promised his security he would do it, before more expeditious methods were used to reach their ultimate aims, assuring his team that he could still influence her, not knowing why he retained that almost unshakeable belief, when recent events showed he really understood nothing of her at all.

The heat rose in him then, sliding through his veins, all temptation, till it was replaced by something sharper, harder. A blazing fury at the indefinable something this woman still held over him. Yet he couldn’t allow that fury to overtake him. He was required to be pleasant, bland. Acting a part that had been planned from the moment they’d uncovered Nic’s existence.

‘That’s his word for Daddy.’

It was as if something cracked inside him. His cold, dead heart broke then was stitched together again with a bright thread, golden and new. From this moment on, he’d be changed for ever. He knew one day he’d be required to marry, have children to protect his line, the line of Nicolai Baldoni, true King of Santa Fiorina. It had all seemed cold and academic. There was nothing academic about this. To hell with the DNA test; this child was his. Conceived when he’d been told it was impossible.

Nicolai leaned in his mother’s arms towards him. Still grasping at the air. He didn’t know what to do. The plans of the day were all frozen by his paralysis in the face of this. So much bigger, more affecting than he’d ever expected.

‘Would you like to hold him?’ Victoria’s voice was quiet, rough. He might have thought it clogged with emotion, but he didn’t trust this obvious schemer and any crocodile tears she might shed. He nodded and Victoria held the little boy out. He came into Sandro’s arms easily.

Nic regarded him, son to father. Raising his hands and patting Sandro’s cheeks, testing to see whether he was real. To Sandro he was lighter than expected. Solid, less...breakable than Sandro knew humans could be. Whatever might come next, Sandro silently vowed to protect him from any person who’d use this child for their own aims.

‘Happy birthday,il mio piccolo principe,’ he murmured. He wanted to take him now, leave, ensure he was safe.

‘I call him Little Prince too. That’s what it means, doesn’t it?’

He turned his attention to Victoria. Those sad eyes back again, the ones that had captured him from the first moment she’d turned them on him. Yet she held a gentle smile on her face.

‘Yes. It’s what my father used to call me.’

He didn’t know why that memory assailed him then or even why he told her, but ever since he’d been given the news of Nic’s existence, memories of his own long-lost family had returned with a vengeance.

Her shoulders seemed to soften. ‘If we’re going to go to your hotel for a meal, I suppose we should get moving.’

He nodded as relief flooded over him. Soon Nicolai would be safe. Then he’d deal with his son’s duplicitous mother. Except as he looked at Victoria, he realised she didn’t seem like the villain in this saga, simply a woman who was tired. The whole tableau here—the room full of toys scattered in a haphazard way, her, him—seemed soordinaryhe could have laughed had he not known what was at stake.

‘I’ll just need to get dressed. Give me Nic and we’ll get ready.’

He didn’t want to relinquish his child, not even for a moment. His grip tightened. ‘I can hold him.’

Victoria glanced to the door which led to the front hall, where his security stood, waiting for his orders.

‘I’m sorry, I—I’m not leaving him with strangers. And he’ll need a nappy change.’

Sandro wanted to shout at her.Who made my son a stranger to me?But didn’t. This morning was all about patience and he had infinite amounts. He’d waited twenty-five years to take the throne of his country—what was another half an hour in the scheme of things?

So long as Nic was safe.

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