Page 49 of Crowned For The King's Secret

That day she’d confronted his doctor. Opened Sandro’s bedside drawer and found a piece of paper with her lipstick kiss and the wordsThank youshe’d written, because he’d set her free and she knew she’d never forget him. What if he couldn’t forget her either? A hard man wouldn’t keep that scrap of paper. That was the act of sentiment. Something...romantic.

What if he loved her too, and thought by sending her away, he was saving her? Protecting her in a way that was misplaced?

There were so many questions in her head to which she had no answers. She’d never know if she didn’t take the chance of breaking her heart all over again. Vic wouldn’t give him up, not without a fight. She just had to convince him that letting her go was not the right thing to do for any of them.

‘What did you and Sandro talk about, in that call?’

Lance shrugged. ‘A lot. In the end I thought I was going to have to sell my soul to get you home, but it was worth it.’

Vic looked at her brother, narrowed her eyes.

‘I know that look,’ he said. ‘You’re determined.’

‘I’m sick of people making decisions about what they think’s best for me, when all they need to do is ask what I want. So, I need you to tell meexactlywhat Sandro said in that phone call.’

Because she was sure there were answers, and she was going to get them all before she fought for what she and Nic deserved.

Sandro walked into the small walled garden where he’d found Victoria and Nic that day which seemed so long ago. A bucolic scene. Mother and child, with kittens. It had given him such peace, watching their happiness. Knowing for sure in that moment that Nic would always be loved. That no matter what happened, Victoria would protect him. Now everything was gone. There was nothing left.

He sat on a garden bench where Victoria and Nic had spent so much of their time here. Even when he’d broken their informal engagement she’d come here with their son. He’d watched from an upper window of the palace, catching his final glimpses of them both. Then they’d stopped. He’d asked his staff why. Why there were no kittens frolicking in the gardens any more. He was told they’d been rehomed.

As Victoria and Nic would be, too soon, and for his sanity, not soon enough.

He’d done the right thing. There was no doubt in his mind. When Victoria had told him about her disastrous first marriage he’d thought this, between them, would be different. He wasnother former husband. Their world was one of passion, mutual respect. A child they shared. Yet he was the same as her husband, a man whose memory he’d come to despise. Deceiving her, even if it had been to protect her and Nic. Taking her away from a family who loved her. Placing her in danger. Her tears and terror for their child had broken him. It had all been his doing. Like her parents, he’d taken away her choices and she deserved whatever the world had to offer her. Every choice, not the opportunities dictated to her by others, by him.

Victoria deserved to find someone to love her, and not be forced into another arranged marriage because it seemed the sensible thing to do. She should have a grand passion and love. She needed poetry written for her. Nic needed to be a little boy, unlike what he’d been allowed as a child. His life had always been about duty.

This was better for them. He wasn’t sure what love was, wasn’t sure he was capable of it. He’d never loved romantically before. There’d been no opportunity or expectation for him. Yet this pain...so all-encompassing he wasn’t sure he’d survive it. In some ways, it was even worse than the pain of losing his parents. That couldn’t be love. He’d always thought of love as a tender, sweet emotion which made your life soft-focus. That had no place in his life, since kings had to rule, be strong. Tenderness and a lack of focus didn’t fit the job description.

There was nothing tender and soft-focus about his emotions now. They were sharp and eviscerating. Something like grief.

Didn’t he read somewhere that grief was the price you paid for love? He’d loved his parents, that he knew. Even though he’d never really remembered grieving for them. So much of that time had been blocked from memory. His terror, fleeing in the night, being called Your Majesty for the first time at nine and knowing that that waswrong.That His Majesty was a king and he couldn’t be the King because he had a father. Then being told the terrible news, the reaction that he realised now any child would have. Of fear, disbelief, fury that what was being saidhadto be lies. Then being told that those were not the reactions of a king but a child, and he was a child no longer. He must do his parents proud.

That day, everything for him had stopped. He’d ceased to be a little boy, yet in so many ways it was as if he’d never grown up. Victoria had been right.

It wasn’t love; it was abuse.

He took his phone, opened his gallery. Once, it had only contained one dreadful photograph. Now, another photograph joined it. Of Victoria and Nic in this garden, snapped in secret the day he’d first seen them here. Those two photographs represented the worst of his life, and the best. Today was about moving forward. It had to be. Her brother was here and he would take her home. He was sure she’d want to leave. The security assessments after his cousin and his henchmen had been arrested meant any risk was no longer imminent. It was a hypothetical one at best. Interpol had rounded up the dregs who’d fled. Lance had violently assured him Victoria and Nic were safer with him than with anyone. It was the right thing to do.

His life had to be about doing the right thing, for if not that, what?

Two photographs, both parts of his life that were now at an end. He opened the one of his parents that had haunted him since the day he’d been shown what his uncle had done, and told in time he could avenge the crime. That photograph was a reminder of what had been lost, of what he must fight against. It had controlled him for as long as he could remember.

That past had died. He could never bring it back. Revenge would never be enough. His finger hovered over the screen. This should never have been the last memory of his parents. He should have been allowed to recall them smiling, happy, before everything had been stolen from him.

It’s abuse, not love.

He pressed delete on the picture, the pain visceral, the relief profound. One photograph left... That photograph was a fresh reminder he’d keep for ever, no matter the pain, because it represented his best and not his worst. One that would serve to remind him of what doing the right thing meant, and what it cost to be that man. What it cost to be the King his parents would have aspired for him to be.

Sandro dropped his phone to the ground, put his head in his hands and wept.

CHAPTER TWELVE

VICTORIAWATCHEDSANDROfor a while, sitting on the bench where she’d spent so many days in this small, walled garden, contemplating her past and her future. He’d not moved, head down in the sunshine as if contemplating life himself. Phone on the gravel at his feet. She began to move towards him, to make her greatest pitch for the future she wanted, the future she wasn’t afraid of any more. Her shadow fell across him and he stirred, picked up his phone. She wondered whether he was happy for what he’d done. Then he looked up at her. His eyes widened. Haunted, red-rimmed. The lines on his face etched deep.

Looking as if he hadn’t slept.

Looking...wretched.

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