by Dani Collins
“Then how?” Her uncle looked at her. He had asked her the first time she’d brought the photos to his attention.
She’d avoided answering then, not wanting a lecture about her actions to derail the reason for their discussion. She’d still hoped he would put her happiness somewhere in the realm of his priorities three months ago. Now she had no such illusions.
She shrugged. “I like to practice my skills. I was looking through files and noticed one with his name on it.”
Everyone in the room seemed shocked by her actions.
“You hacked into your King’s private files?” Nikolai asked, nothing in his tone indicating what he thought about that.
But his deep voice reverberated through her being nonetheless. If she could have chosen one person not to be here for this farce, it would be King Nikolai of Mirrus.
“Not exactly. I hacked into Demyan’s files.” She frowned. “In fact, I was looking for security breach points. To shore them up. I like Demyan. I did not want him to be vulnerable to other corporate or politically motivated hackers.”
“Thank you,” Demyan said amidst gasps and condemnation by others.
“And so because you were angry my son had not paid you enough attention since signing the contract, and in a misguided fit of jealousy and feminine pique, you thought to embarrass him into action?”
She stared at the old King of Mirrus, flabbergasted at his interpretation of her actions.
“You think I was jealous?” she asked in icy disbelief she made no effort to soften.
“Naturally,” Konstantin said, ignoring her tone as he had her person for the past decade. “Only you miscalculated my reaction.”
“Did I?” she asked, doubting very much that she had.
“Your weekly online auction of the items I sent to you in my effort to court you prior to announcing our formal engagement made me look the fool.”
The wooing gifts had started arriving exactly one month after her appeal to King Fedir to renegotiate the terms of the contract, no doubt prompted by him. Konstantin’s attempt at courtship had been as impersonal as the greeting between strangers at a State function and with even less effort put behind it.
“The proceeds go to a very deserving charity,” she pointed out, not at all unhappy with the direction this conversation was heading, and not particularly bothered that Konstantin had found her disposal of the gifts inappropriate.
Maksim swore, a pithy Ukrainian curse that shocked the people around him. But he was looking at Nataliya with reluctant respect. He knew.
Nataliya couldn’t help smiling at the man who had been as close as a brother until she was thirteen years old, and her entire family was ripped from her. She even winked.
He laughed.
“You find this amusing?” Prince Konstantin asked with angry reproach.
“I find this situation laughable, yes,” Maksim said without apology in his manner, or tone.
And Nataliya wondered if the future King of Volyarus was more reasonable than his father and understood how over-the-top everyone’s reaction was.
Not that she had not relied on that extreme reaction, but she still found it archaic, chauvinistic and not just a little ridiculous. Her manipulations would not have been possible if a gross double standard did not exist in the minds of almost every male in this room.
“You think your cousin is amusing, though her actions have destroyed our families’ plans of a merger?” Konstantin asked furiously.
“Oh, there will be a business merger,” Demyan said before his brother could answer. “Both our countries will benefit, but more to the point, Mirrus cannot afford to back out. The repercussions would be devastating for Mirrus Global and your country’s economy.”
“I will not marry her,” Konstantin said implacably.
His father looked pained, and his brother, the King, frowned, but Nataliya felt elation pour through her. She had won. Because regardless of what the rest of the people in this room wanted, his words had just released her from her promise. And ultimately, that was all that mattered to her.
She’d only been eighteen, but she’d signed the contract in good faith and had been unwilling to simply renege. Her integrity would not allow it. She was not her father.
King Fedir suddenly looked old, and tired in a way she’d never noticed before. “That is exactly what you wanted, though, wasn’t it?” he asked her.
“I could have done without the name calling and disgusting double standard, but yes.”
King Fedir shook his head, clearly confused by her reaction. “I thought you wanted your mother settled back in her home country.”
“Ten years ago, I wanted that more than anything. I wanted to come home, or at least be able to visit often.”
“And that has changed?” King Fedir asked, sounding as fatigued as he looked.
“My mother has finally found peace with her life in America.”
Queen Oxana looked wounded. “You don’t want to come home?” she asked her best friend of more than thirty years.
Mama drew herself up, her dignity settled around her like a force field, making Nataliya nothing but proud. “My home is in America now.”
“You do not mean that.” Queen Oxana had the effrontery to sound hurt when she’d done nothing to stop Mama and Nataliya’s exile fifteen years ago.
“I do.”
“She does,” Nataliya said with satisfaction, and was so happy about that she could cry. “You and your husband exiled my mother and me for the sins of my father. And though he knew how important that clause in the contract was to us both, he made no effort to press for fulfillment of the marriage merger.” Now it would not happen at all.
Queen Oxana’s expression was troubled. “You were too young to tie down to marriage when it was signed.”
“But not too young to sign it? Not too young to be used as a political and business pawn?” Nataliya shook her head in disbelief.
“We all have duty we must adhere to,” the Queen said, though with less fervent conviction than she used to.
“Our duty included exile. Looking back, I realize that asking more of my daughter was obscene.” Mama could do regal disapproval as well as any queen.
“You know why we had to ask the sacrifice of you,” King Fedir said to his cousin.
But Mama made Nataliya so proud yet again when she shook her head. “No, I never understood your decision to sacrifice me, a woman who was a better sister to you than Svitlana ever was. I spent years grieving the loss of my homeland, but I grieve no longer.”
“And so you decided to break the contract?” Nikolai asked, this time his opinion clear for any to hear the disapproval and disappointment in his tone.
Nataliya met his gaze squarely. “My mother told me five years ago that she was not sure she would move back to Volyarus permanently, even if she could.”
His brows drew together in a thoughtful frown. “Then what prompted your dating and the very public rejection of my brother’s attempt to court you?”
“There is so much wrong with that question, I don’t even know where to start.” Was he as draconian as his father?
Nataliya had never believed it of Nikolai.
“Try. Please.”
It was the please that did it.
“One, I was never engaged to your brother. I was contracted to be engaged and married at a later date, which was never specified. Not exactly good contract negotiations,” she criticized King Fedir. “So, I could have been dating all along.”
Heck, she could have been sleeping around. She’d had no legal or moral obligation to go to her marriage bed a virgin, and the stipulation of her chastity or lack of romantic social life until the marriage had not even been alluded to in the contract.
She’d read it through, all thirty-six pages of it, before embarking on the dating article.
“But you did not date before this.” Nikolai’s words made it very clear that his family had in fact had her watched.
She shrugged, not particularly caring that a lady was never supposed to be so dismissive. “I did not want to risk developing an emotional attachment that would have made keeping my promise difficult, or possibly even impossible.”
Nikolai nodded in approval of her words. “Very wise.”
“So, by converse, you consider that your brother has been foolish?” she asked, unable to resist.
Konstantin cursed.
Nikolai looked at his brother and then back to her. “Considering the outcome of his choices, I would say that is a given.”
“My choices?” Konstantin demanded with umbrage. “I was doing my best to protect and expand the business interests of our country so that we did not lose our independent status. How does that make me the bad guy here?”
Nataliya might have agreed with Konstantin, except for two things. One, he’d had affairs, if not dates. Two, he’d acted like an ass about her innocent dating.
If he hadn’t, she might have even felt compelled to honor the contract.
But Nikolai ignored him. “You said one, there are other things wrong with my question?”
“Second, it is obvious that what prompted my actions was my desire not to marry a man who so obviously had no more personal integrity than my father.”
“I am not like your philandering father.” The Prince took clear offence with the comparison. “We were not engaged!”
Nataliya looked at Konstantin with a frown. “If that is your attitude, then how do you explain refusing to marry me because I dated other men while you were having sex with other women?”
Konstantin’s mouth opened and closed without him saying anything.
“Anything else?” Nikolai asked her.
“Do you believe that waiting ten years to fulfill the terms of a contract is keeping good faith in that contract?” she asked instead of answering.
“There were circumstances,” Nikolai reminded her, almost gently.
She nodded in agreement. “Your father’s heart attack, followed by your own ascension to the throne and your brother having to take over more business responsibility.”
“Yes.”
“That was eight years ago.”
“Our family was in mourning,” Konstantin said snidely. “Surely you did not expect a formal announcement during that time.”
He was referring to the death of his brother’s wife, the new Queen, and trying to make her feel small doing it, but Nataliya wasn’t going to let anyone in this room make her feel less than. She wasn’t the one who had dismissed finer feelings or responsibilities.
“It is customary to observe a period of mourning for one year.”
And it had been five. It didn’t need to be said. They all knew. Again, the timing did not justify the ten-year wait.
For her, or her mother.
“No one from Volyarus approached me about formalizing the engagement,” Konstantin pointed out, like that was some kind of fact in his favor.
“Are you saying that you only fulfill the terms of a contract when you are pushed into doing so?” she asked, not impressed and letting that show.
Konstantin glowered. “You have all but admitted you don’t want the marriage,” he accused rather than answer her question.
She wouldn’t deny it. “I do not.” While she’d never actually wanted to marry this man, she had wanted Mama to be able to return to the bosom of her family.
Nataliya had come to realize both she and her mom were better off without a family that could eject them from their lives so easily, but that was not how it had been ten years ago.
“If you had realized you didn’t want to marry my son, surely you should have taken less scandalous steps to insure it.” Prince Evengi sounded more baffled than angry at this point. “You could simply have reneged on the contract.”
She cast a glance at her uncle before answering. “I approached King Fedir with my desire to do just that.”
“And?”
“And he threatened to remove financial support of my mother.”
“You are not worried he will do that now?” Nikolai asked her with a frowning side glance toward King Fedir.
“He could try, but I think everyone in this room is aware of how far I am willing to go to protect her.”
“Are you threatening me, child?” King Fedir asked her, sounding more hurt than worried.
She gave him a cool look, hoping it conveyed just how very little she cared about his hurt feelings after all he had put her mother through. “I am telling you that all actions have consequences and I guarantee you do not want to live with the ones that would come from you doing something so reprehensible.”
“Solomia, talk to your daughter!” King Fedir demanded, his shock palpable.
“I am very proud of you, Nataliya, you know that, yes?”
“Yes.”
The King frowned. “That is not what I meant.”
“You are upset because she carries the ruthlessness that is such a strong trait in our family?” Mama asked her cousin, their King.
Nikolai looked at Nataliya, his expression assessing. “But you did make a promise. You signed that contract,” Nikolai said.
“I did.” Nataliya could wish she hadn’t been so eager to make up for her father’s sins at eighteen, but she couldn’t deny she had signed the contract.
“And you take your own promises very seriously.”
“I do.” Hence her need to get Prince Konstantin to back out of the contract.
Nataliya might no longer feel it was her responsibility to compensate for her father’s behavior, but she still understood duty only too well. And she may have been exiled, but her integrity as a member of the royal family was still very much intact.
“She was willing to renege on the contract,” Konstantin pointed out. “Her personal ethics cannot be that strong.”
King Fedir drew himself up, his expression forbidding. “On the contrary, my niece came to me and asked me to negotiate different terms, sure that if the suggestion came from me, you would be more than willing to do so. At no time did she intimate our family should simply renege.”
Nataliya didn’t know what the point was of her cousin harping on how he thought of her as a niece. She would have thought King Fedir would want to distance himself from her at this point. Just as he’d done fifteen years ago.
Nikolai nodded his understanding. “But you refused?”
“I did, more the fool I.”
Personally, Nataliya agreed with him. Her uncle had been a fool to think that she would sit meekly by, when in her estimation, she should never have been asked to sign the darn thing in the first place.
“But we raised a lot of money for Mama and Aunt Oxana’s favorite charity,” she pointed out, not entirely facetiously.
The charity that helped families stay near their children receiving treatment for cancer and other life-threatening illnesses was very dear to Nataliya’s heart, as well. However, no one else seemed to find that the benefit she did, if all the gloomy faces were to go by.
“All that aside, you still consider yourself bound by the terms of the contract, do you not?” Nikolai asked her.
She stared at him, not sure what he was trying to get at. “Prince Konstantin has verbally repudiated his willingness to abide by its terms in front of witnesses.”
“He did.”
She smiled, relief that the current King of Mirrus wasn’t going to try to push her to marry his brother despite either of their desires.
“The contract, as it is written, still stands,” Nikolai said, his tone brooking no argument.
Shock made Nataliya lightheaded as dread filled her. “Your brother denounced the contract,” she reminded
him, even though she shouldn’t have to, because Nikolai had just agreed that was the case. “I am under no obligation to marry him now.”
“But you are under obligation to marry a prince of the House of Merikov,” Nikolai said implacably.
Gasps sounded, his father demanded what he meant, but Nikolai ignored it all, his attention focused entirely on Nataliya.
Her brain was whirling, trying to parse out what he meant. Her gaze skittered to the youngest Merikov Prince. Dimitri, called Dima by his friends of which she counted herself one, though they’d met on only a few occasions, they had chatted more via text and email than she had with Konstantin in past years.
Not even out of the university yet, Dima was looking with utter horror at his eldest brother.
“I will not enter into such a bargain with a child,” Nataliya vowed, knowing being called a child would prick her friend and unable to pass up the chance to tease him.
“You were four years younger when you signed that contract ten years ago,” Nikolai pointed out without correcting her use of the term child, earning a frown from Dima.
“And still desperate to return home. I’m not that teenager any longer either.” And she would not allow done to Dima, what had been done to her. She liked the twenty-two-year-old Prince.
“Regardless of what your reasons were for signing the contract, you did so. And while you were only eighteen, you were not a minor. You are obligated to its terms unless both parties agree to different ones.”
“I will not marry either of your brothers.”
“I am glad you did not include me in that categorical refusal.” His smile was more like an apex predator baring its teeth.
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU?” NATALIYA ASKED FAINTLY.
No, Nikolai could not be saying what Nataliya thought he was saying. “You’re not a prince.” The contract stipulated a prince. “You’re a king,” her voice rose and cracked on the word king, but seriously...?
He had to have lost his mind.
Ten years ago, she would have jumped at the chance to marry this man, but he had only had eyes for the beautiful socialite he had ended up married to. Naively believing that marriage to his brother would cure Nataliya of her adolescent feelings for the unattainable Crown Prince, she’d signed that stupid, bloody, awful contract in good faith.
