by Tia Siren
Carl stood at the door for a moment to stomp the thick snow off his rubber boots. He took hold of the lapels of his hooded parka and shook off the heavy flakes that had gathered there. He tugged the thick mittens from his gnarled hands and shoved them into the parka’s pockets. Then he hung the parka on the wall to dry.
He moseyed toward the bar, pausing to say hello and ask the guys who were shooting darts who was winning. He nodded at the pool players and blew out a long breath as he hoisted his boney frame onto the barstool. He gave me a smile that was missing its front teeth and asked the same question he’d asked me every night for ten years.
“How’s the world treating you, Becca Boo?”
“The world is treating me just fine, Carl,” I said with a smile. Old Carl had called me Becca Boo for as long as I could remember. I had no idea why he called me that, and he couldn’t remember the reason. I set the beer in front of him and nodded at the pass-through behind the bar that looked into the kitchen.
“The usual, Carl?”
“I might try something different tonight,” he said, grinning at me as he brought the beer to his lips. When he smiled, his eyes disappeared behind a single line of bushy white eyebrows. He took a long drink and smacked his lips. “I was gonna order fries and a burger, but on second thought, burger and fries will do.”
“That’s good, since that’s all we sell,” I said, winking at him.
I stuck my head in the pass-through and yelled at Pete, the old black gentleman who had been the fry cook at the Snowcap since the place opened. Like Carl, Pete had always looked old to me. He stood at the grill with a greasy spatula in his hand, always at the ready, and waited for me to yell out the orders. And I do mean yell, because Pete was as deaf as they came.
I cupped my hands to my mouth and yelled, “Burger and fries for Carl!” Pete gave me a slow nod and saluted me with the spatula and then reached into the freezer for a hamburger patty and dropped it on the grill. The meat immediately began to sizzle.
I picked up the bar rag and started wiping down the vacant end of the bar. As I swirled the damp rag over the Formica bar top, the little voice inside my head returned. It came every night about this time to taunt me. The little voice always said the same thing.
Welcome to your life, Becca Boo. You’ll die behind this ratty old bar, just like your dad.
I never bothered to argue with the voice, because I knew it was right. It would take a miracle to get me to leave this place, and miracles weren’t doled out to people like me. The Snowcap would be my home until the day I died.
The place was small, with just enough room for half a dozen tables, a couple dozen chairs, and a ten-foot bar with eight wobbly stools. In one corner was an old bumper pool table with the felt nearly worn off and its one pool cue that everyone shared. In another corner hung a dart board that only had two darts left.
The plank floor creaked with every footfall and the coal heater in the corner barely kept the place above freezing.
It was hard to believe that my entire world was encompassed within these four falls and the mountains surrounding the little town of Snowcap, population two hundred until somebody died from frostbite or old age.
I knew there was a big world outside that front door.
All I had to do was open the door and step out into it.
The last time I’d done that, it hadn’t worked out so well.
I’d come crawling back to Snowcap with my tail tucked between my legs like a whipped dog.
I’d love to have a man in my life, but not if it meant getting my heart or nose broken again.
Once was plenty enough for me.
CHAPTER TWO: Rebecca
His name was Charlie Feenie. He worked as a surveyor for a company that came through Snowcap five summers ago, harvesting white pine for the furniture mills in North Carolina.
Charlie was six-feet-five, broad at the shoulders and narrow at the waist, with coal black hair and deep blue eyes and muscles in places I didn’t know muscles even grew.
He came into my daddy’s bar one night with a bunch of his logging buddies, all of them rowdy and full of piss and vinegar. I caught him looking at me as I set their beers on the table. His hand touched mine when he paid the check. I thought my heart actually jumped a little. I felt a searing heat inside my belly that I’d never felt before.
I gave Charlie my virginity in the cab of his truck two nights later, and he convinced me to take off with him when the surveying job in Snowcap was done. My daddy tried to warn me, but I was too young and stupid and horny and in love to listen. I packed a bag and snuck off into the night with the man I thought I’d spend my life with.
Charlie turned out to be the biggest son of a bitch you’d ever want to meet. He treated me like dirt and talked to me like I was a dog. He took up with another woman in the next town, and when I caught him fucking her in our bed, he told me to grow the fuck up and leave him alone.
I was just a kid, and that was how I reacted. I stomped my foot and slapped him in the face. Without so much as a blink of an eye, he punched me in the nose with his fist as hard as he could, knocking me out. He kicked me in the ribs while I lay curled up on the floor. Then, as I lay there with blood gushing out of my nose, screaming for help, he ripped off my clothes and raped me.
“I’m done with you, bitch,” he sneered, picking up my clothes and throwing them at me afterward. “Get your ass dressed. You’re going home to daddy.”
With my face bloodied and my body bruised and my clothes hanging off me, he shoved me into his truck and then kicked me out at the bus station. I remembered standing there on the road with a bloody rag over my nose, bawling like a baby as he drove away. I hated to admit it now, but if he had turned around I probably would have crawled into the truck and gone with him.
That was how fucking stupid I was back then.
I was not so stupid anymore.
The lady at the bus station felt sorry for me. She cleaned me up in the restroom and gave me a ticket back to Snowcap. My daddy met me at the bus stop and took me home.
I never mentioned Charlie Feenie or leaving Snowcap again.
That was the old me.
The poor helpless me.
If Charlie Feenie set foot in my bar now, I’d split his head open with a fucking meat clever and feed his little pecker to dogs.
Nobody would ever do that to me again.
Nobody.
CHAPTER THREE: Nikolay “Nick” Rostov
I tugged my iPhone from inside the leather jacket I was wearing and held it to my lips. “Siri, remind me to kill the idiot in the Kosnovian travel office who sent me to this horrid place.”
I was seething as I tucked the phone back into my jacket so I could focus on the road. Here I was, the crown prince of Kosnovia, one of the few remaining Russian monarchies, driving a Budget Rent-A-Car through a blinding snowstorm in upstate New York, trying to reach the Overlook Hotel where the economic summit was being held.
I cursed my father for sending me here.
Fine, I had a master’s in economics from Oxford, but surely someone less important than I could have made the trip.
It was not about economics, I thought. It was about finding a bride and producing an heir, preferably a bride from America so the American people would feel connected to our tiny monarchy. My father had seen too many old movies. He had become a romantic in his old age. Real life didn’t work that way. Not even for someone like me.
Granted, when the Kosnovian travel officer asked if I would need a chauffeured car to drive me from the airport in New York City to the summit in Snowcap, New York, I gave him a condescending look and told him that I was quite capable of driving myself. He gave me a respectful nod and said he’d have a car waiting for me.
I had no idea at the time that the summit would be held in November, a hundred miles from the airport, and that the car he reserved for me would be a Ford Focus—a car aptly named because if you didn’t focus, you might just run the damn thing over.
/>
I also had no idea that snow started falling in upstate New York in late fall. When I told the woman at the car rental office that I was driving to Snowcap for an international economic summit, she shot me an amused look and wished me luck. I thought she was just flirting with me, as most women did.
In reality, she was probably thinking that I was a moron who really needed luck. At this point, I could not prove her wrong.
That had been four hours ago, and now it was getting dark and the snow was falling heavier by the minute. Great gusts of snow and ice swirled around the dark road in front of me. I was starting to feel like my luck was running out.
* * *
My father, Anatoly Rostov–rather KING Anatoly II–the ruler of the tiny monarchy of Kosnovia, would have laughed at such a storm. He would have poked a stiff finger into my chest and said, “You are a Rostov. Rostov’s are afraid of nothing.”
That may normally have been true, but this Rostov, his only son and heir, the one who was educated at Oxford and raised with everything handed over on a silver platter, was afraid of freezing to death on the side of the road in a FUCKING FORD FOCUS!
Would it have made matters any more palatable if I were to die in one of my Ferraris or Lamborghinis safely housed back home? Perhaps, but only slightly more.
I was just twenty-five years old, and one of the few remaining crown princes left on earth. I was most certainly the last monarch of a Russian bloodline. And if things in Kosnovia didn’t change, I would be the last to wear the crown that had been in my family for over two hundred years.
We were a dying breed, the Russian royals, and like in Britain, the monarchy had turned over the running of the country to parliamentarians. It had been a difficult decision for my father to give up his power, but he was not a man entirely driven by ego. He understood that we royals were mere figureheads now.
Unlike the British citizenry, which still held its royals in high esteem, the people of Kosnovia were growing tired of supporting the lavish lifestyle my mother and father—and I—enjoyed.
There had been rumblings for years that the royal family was a costly symbol of a bygone era.
The anarchists wanted parliament to seize all land and holdings of the Rostov family, which was estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of US dollars. My mother and father would be exiled from the central palace and given a modest honorarium to see them through to their deaths.
Yours truly, the one TMZ dubbed “The Kosnovian Playboy,” would be out on my ass with nothing. I had no doubt that I would survive such a coup, but I would miss the comforts I had come to know and expect from life. Yes, I was a spoiled brat. But I was a prince. Royal blood flowed through my veins. I was allowed a bit of spoilage…
“There is but one hope for our family,” my father said when I met with him before coming to America. We stood on the balcony outside of his office on the third floor of the royal palace, looking out over the city square below. It was past midnight and the city square, a mecca of activity during the day, was dark and quiet. The temperature had dropped into the teens. The air brought a cold bite that chilled me to my bones.
My father, the strongest man I’d ever known in every aspect of the word, looked old and frail standing there next to me wrapped in a heavy blanket from his bed. His once coal black hair, bushy moustache, and pointed beard had all turned grey. His posture that had once been so straight and proud was slouching a bit, as if the weight of history were bearing down on his shoulders, causing his spine to bow.
He put a hand on my arm and said, “I received a message from the prime minister this morning. Parliament is going to consider the people’s demand that the monarchy be put to an end.”
“What? They wouldn’t dare.” I hitched my chin proudly in the air, but deep inside, I knew they would indeed dare. The monarchy was an endangered species. It had been since before my birth. It was just a matter of time until the palace was taken over and turned into a library or a school or some other building of public use. We both knew that we couldn’t stop progress. We could simply prolong the past.
I turned to face him. My breath clouded the cold air between us. “So, Father, what do we do?”
My father sucked in a deep breath and put a hand on my shoulder. “You must find a bride and produce an heir as quickly as possible, my son. It is the only way to preserve the life we lead.”
I regretted it now, but I had been my usual arrogant self. “Are you insane? Do you really expect me to get married and have a baby just so you can keep your throne?”
“Show me the respect I’m due, boy, or you’ll be picking yourself up off the floor,” he said, glaring at me from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “I may be an old man, but I am still your father and your king.”
The look in his eyes put me squarely back in my place. I was six foot three and all muscle from playing rugby at Oxford for the last six years. I held black belts in karate, taekwondo, and jujitsu. I was not afraid of any man and very few women (I didn’t just play rugby at school, you know).
My father was five foot ten and two hundred pounds of over-indulged fat. Even so, he still had the ability to make me feel like a little boy again just by giving me the look he was giving me now.
“Apologies, my king,” I said with a nod of respect. “But you can’t be serious. How am I supposed to find a wife so quickly?”
“You do what men in our family have done for centuries,” he said. He held out his hand and rolled his fingers into a fist. “You simply take the woman you want and make her your wife. She has no choice but to comply with your wishes.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You can’t be serious. You truly expect me to kidnap a woman and force her to marry me?”
“It has been our way since your great-grandfather,” he said. “I took your mother, your grandfather took your grandmother, and so on and so on for generations.” He leaned in close and narrowed his eyes at me. “You are a future king of Kosnovia, Nikolay. It is your birthright to take any woman you desire, whether she desires you or not. Over time, she will accept her fate and come to love you for choosing her. Look at your mother and me. We have been married for nearly thirty years.”
“And according to her, she hated you for the first ten years because you stole her from her bed in the middle of the night and forced her to marry,” I said with a smile. “I’m not sure the old ways work in this modern age, Father. If I were to kidnap a woman and force her to marry me…well, I’m just not sure that is a viable option in the twenty-first century. It’s certainly not something parliament would approve of.”
“The public is calling for our heads, Nikolay,” he said with a heavy sigh. He braced his hands on the marble railing and let his breath go out into the night. “We have very little time left.”
“You’re being overdramatic,” I said, giving him a dismissive wave. “This isn’t the eighteen hundreds, Father. And you’re not Marie Antoinette.”
“I’m speaking figuratively,” he said. He closed his eyes and inhaled the cold night air. “Rebellion is in the air, my son, and nothing quells a rebellion like a royal marriage and a royal baby. The Brits have known this for years. Each time the public demands abdication, one of their lot gets married or has a baby and the public laps it up like kittens sucking their mother’s teat.”
“Father, please…”
He turned to face me. He put his hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes. “You are our last hope, Nikolay. You must find a wife and produce an heir as quickly as possible. And it must be an American woman.”
I scoffed at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“If you take an American bride and produce an heir, the American people will flock to support our right to rule. The Americans are a shallow people. It’s all about reality television and the internet. Perhaps we could film your quest and put it on Facebook!”
I smiled. “How do you even know what Facebook is?”
“I’m old, but I’m not uninformed,” he said, looking at m
e with a smile beneath the thick moustache. He held up a finger. “Perhaps you could wed a Kardashian! Even an ugly one.”
“I don’t think there are any ugly Kardashians,” I said, smiling, rolling my eyes at him. After a moment, I let the smile fade away and then turned to face him.
I asked, “And if I don’t kidnap a wife and produce an heir while I’m in America?”
He shook his head as a tear came to his eye. “If you do not, then I’m afraid life as we know it will be lost forever.”
CHAPTER FOUR: Rebecca
“Storms getting worse, Becca Boo,” Carl said, nodding out the window at the heavy snow that was coming down sideways.
“Then I reckon you’d better drink up and get home,” I said, setting Carl’s third mug of beer in front of him. I picked up a rag to dry my hands and glanced around the bar. Everyone had gone but Carl, who didn’t seem concerned in the least about the snow falling outside. I was concerned, not because I didn’t think Carl could make it home, but because I didn’t want to be snowed in with him. I loved old Carl, but I didn’t want to have a sleepover with him.
“Are those lights?” Carl asked, squinting at the window.
“What fool would be out on a night like this other than you?” I asked with a grin. I went to the window and cupped my hands over my eyes to peer out. My breath fogged the glass in front of my face. I wiped it off with the back of my hand.
Sure enough, a small car had pulled into the lot. It slid to a stop next to Carl’s truck. The door opened and a tall man wearing a leather jacket that was suited for much warmer weather emerged. He stomped through the snow, heading to the front door.
I beat him to the door. I tugged it open and moved aside so he could come in. He was preceded by a gust of wind that blew snow into the bar all the way to the pool table.
