Royal Inheritance

by McKenna James

  “Raul,” my father growls as we come around from behind him to find the man in question secured between two guards, grinning from ear to ear.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Gavin

  “We caught him trying to make a run for it out of the emergency exits toward the back of the resort. With bags full of cash, just like Gavin had preempted and warned us to be on the lookout for.”

  I damn well knew it. I want to shout it from the rooftops. This guy is scum and has been stealing from the Royal family. I knew he couldn’t be trusted and that I wasn’t wrong about him.

  “Thank you, George, Aaron.” They nod, taking the hint to leave. They release Raul none too gently and then exit the room to keep guard out in the hallway. The King waits a few beats before looking back to Raul. “You of all people. How could you, after all the Royal family has done for your family.” He shakes his head in disappointment, and an underlying rage boils just below the surface.

  He's keeping himself in check, though. Many a grown man has withered under that judgment, that deathly steel look, but Raul does not. He glares right back at the King, his own anger matching the King’s almost tenfold.

  “How could I? How could I?” he repeats, his volume getting louder and louder with each syllable. “How could I not? It was incredibly easy, actually. I almost got away with it too, if that one”—

  he points an accusing finger in my direction—“hadn't been so damn clever and had your men posted everywhere and on the lookout for me. I was this freaking close to getting away.”

  The King’s face is burning up with rage, and he looks like he's about to explode.

  “What, you thought you could have it all? Just waltz in like you own our country and take it all, take my girl so easily without any repercussions? I took the one thing that matters most to you, the one thing that would see your family in ruin. And I took it all, right under your noses.”

  My brow furrows. What girl? The queen flushes bright red, and then it all becomes crystal clear. The queen is the girl. Holy. Shit. I watch dumbfounded as she swivels in an instant to face Raina. Her face a violent shade of crimson now, and her hands a shaking mess.

  “Raina. Please, come with me.” She manages to get out through her trembling lips.

  Raina nods mutely, a look of complete shock shadowing her now pale face.

  I continue to stare dumbly, stunned into silence by Raul’s declaration and the queen’s scarlet face of guilt and embarrassment as she whisks Raina into the other room without a second to spare.

  God knows what that conversation is going to hold. If the queen is even forthcoming at all. But, I'll be damned. I did not see that coming. The queen had some kind of relationship with this vile man; who knows when or for how long. I’ll never understand women, for as long as I live.

  It would appear this sort of thing ran in the family, though. Apparently Raina isn’t alone in diddling with the help and common folk. But it is clear that Raina doesn't know anything about it. The shock on her face spoke volumes. If she did, there is no way she’d have let the idea of us go, ever.

  And the King... Well, he’s just angry. Murderous even. Part of that I am sure is for me, no doubt. But, he knew. I don’t know for how long, or if he’s always known, but there isn’t a doubt in my mind that he knew about Raul and his wife. I wonder if that's why he rushed here? It surely wasn’t to catch Raina and I in bed together. God, what was I thinking? I fucked up yet again. But damn, I love her too much that her confession was all it took to break me into submission.

  I put all of that out of my mind and focus on the here and the now. The main thing I'm taking away from all of this—and no, it’s not like mother, like daughter—it’s that I was right all along. I knew I couldn’t have been so far off the mark. That’s not a cockiness, but a tried and true method of years of training. I’ve never been wrong, and I just couldn't shake the feeling he was completely full of shit when he denied any involvement into the Royal heist. I couldn't put my finger on it enough to be certain, though.

  He gave such a compelling show that he was incredibly believable. He even had me questioning everything I'd found out before that moment. Questioning my very existence as a trained special ops soldier. Which I never do, unless Raina is involved. Then I question everything.

  As I never take anything at face value, I didn't let it go. I couldn’t. So, I text messaged the other guards on duty before I’d even left the room to be prepared for him to run.

  Low and behold. He did. With a boatload of cash to boot. It explains why we couldn't find the money anywhere. He had it on him this whole time, hiding in plain sight; though I still imagine he has some stashed in the bank deposit boxes. But I do wonder if there is a slight trace of the money, some trail, though small at the very least. I guess working in the banking word must have helped him cover is tracks. More than cover them, wipe them completely clean, as if they never existed in the first place.

  “Gavin, I’d appreciate it if you could give us a minute alone please,” the King asks—no, demands in that polite way of his that begs to be commanded mere moments after his wife and daughter have left the room. All smooth calmness and royal civility, his rage well-hidden again.

  “Gavin, is it? Well, Gavin, you might be clever enough to halt my escape, but you did, however, fall for my performance earlier. That wasn’t too smart, now was it. Even still, you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself. I’d been practicing for years, you see. Just in case something like this ever came up and I needed a good exit strategy.”

  I don’t engage the smug asshole; instead, I address the King directly.

  “I’ll leave you to it, Your Majesty. I’ll just be on the other side of that door, in the hall if you should need me.” I crack my knuckles, wanting nothing more than to pummel this guy’s ass for what he’s put them all through. Raina might not have needed to marry some pompous prince.

  I make a move to leave, when Raul pulls me up short as he bursts out, stopping me in my tracks.

  “No, Gavin, I don’t think you should give us a minute.” Was it my imagination, or did I sense a tremor in his voice? “I think you should stay and hear my side of the story and how I fooled you all.”

  “There is no side to your story. You are nothing but a thief full of lies.”

  Raul dismisses the King as if he hadn’t spoken at all and addresses only me.

  “The queen, as you know her now, was the love of my life, back when she was merely a princess, and had no regard for pompous titles or rank. We’d known each other since we were small children, as I played in the royal gardens from a small age while my father worked—”

  “Yes, yes, as the gardener’s son.” The King waves his hands, clearly wishing this man would shut up or disappear entirely. Why he doesn’t just make that happen is anyone's guess. “That is sadly to be expected,” the King mutters.

  “Yes, I was the gardener’s son, but she didn’t think anything of it. She was just a woman, and I was just a man. She was going to run away with me. Until you came into the picture, and her parents forced her to marry or they’d have shipped her off to a nunnery, never to be seen again.”

  It sounds like something the King and Queen would do with Raina, if she were not to marry and take the throne. But I stay silent, taking all this in but with a grain of salt. The king does little to correct him or look as if the information he is hearing is anything new to him. The King is a hard man to read. He keeps everything very close to his chest, as all high monarchs should, but I have been with him for years. I can read him well. He is not shocked by any of this.

  “She wrote me, you know?” The king says nothing still, so Raul continues. “Telling me how she had no choice, how she had to do it for our country, and that we’d still be able to see each other in secret; that she would always love me. But, after the wedding, I miraculously received a scholarship to a university in England, one I, nor my father, ever applied for. My father refused to hear anything about me not going, practically
pushed me on the plane.

  “With little choice in the matter, I had to go. I vowed I would better myself for her then come back and steal her away, so we could run away together and be happy, finally having the means to give her the life she deserved.

  “I came home to find my father had been let go with a measly severance pay, and I was no longer allowed admittance to the grounds. All my letters were rejected, all contact denied. I couldn’t reach her, and I tried all number of ways to get a message to her.”

  “She didn’t want you, you were nothing but a summer fling. She was never going to give up her palace life, give up her daughter, for you.”

  “Part of that is true. She would not give up her daughter, who by the time I returned home and managed to get word to her was seven-years-old. She’d eventually gotten word to me, through a guard with the simple message of, family means everything.”

  “So you’ve been plotting your revenge ever since? What did you hope to achieve, that she’d leave me and all that she’s ever known to run away with you because you now have all the money? Please. What do you take her for? A simpleton? Ha.”

  “I know her better than you ever will. She is no simpleton, but she does like a simple life. The money wasn’t for her. It was to hit you where it hurt the most. And oh how sweet revenge is. Tastes like victory on my tongue. Now you’ll never be able to give her what she deserves.”

  “Where does Edgar come in?” I ask, the curiosity getting the better of me.

  “We went to university together, old school pals. I’d gotten word that the royal family were in the market for an advisor, so I worked a few of the strings, and voila, Edgar was hired.”

  “The two of you planned this all along?”

  “Yes. And it was seamless. I set up different accounts, different investment opportunities, and Edgar would slowly embezzle the money to where I’d tell him. For years, you’ve been losing money, and you didn’t even know it. We set up some other accounts, ones to take the fall, to look like bad investments so you'd never be the wiser, never be able to track it.”

  Raul looks like he wants to cackle. The look of pure satisfaction and smugness on his face makes me want to punch the look right off it. The King looks positively ill.

  “And then what? You decided he knew too much, so you cleaned up, cut off all your loose ends and killed him? Your friend of nearly twenty years, murdered in cold blood. That’s some thanks for all he did for you.”

  “I did no such thing. Edgar’s death was a tragic accident,” he whines.

  “Bullshit.”

  “For once I’m telling you the truth. I had nothing to gain from his death. He didn’t have access to the money, and he didn’t know all the tiny details to be able to deny any wrongdoing without any of the relevant information. He was my only friend in the world. I’d never have hurt him.”

  I still don’t believe him, and I tell him as such. “You ran straight after his death. Sounds pretty guilty to me. Even the police are looking for you in regards to his death. We’re not the only ones who have been hunting you, just the most capable.”

  “Of course I ran off. Guilty, yes, of stealing all the royal money. I knew that with Edgar dead, there would be no way of hiding what we’d done. It would come to light with a new advisor or with the police looking into things. Why would I hang around for that? His death was a tragic accident, nothing more.”

  “This is going nowhere,” the King growls. “Have the local police called and have him arrested. You’ll confess everything and have every penny returned to the royal vaults; even if we have to drag you to the bank ourselves.”

  “And why would I do any of that? My lips and fingers are sealed.”

  “Then you will spend the rest of your miserable life behind bars. The money will be seized one way or another. I care not either way.”

  Raul shakes his head. “I would rather die than rot in prison. You’ll never take me alive. Being without her is a slow death anyway.”

  I sadly can relate to him, completely understanding where he’s coming from. And I was paying attention. This is no doubt what I have to look forward to. A miserable life sentence. Before this is all over and done with, I’ll be banished to the ends of the Earth. Or worse. Though, as Raul said, nothing is worse than living without her. Honestly, I probably deserve it. And the idea of being without Raina is already eating at me.

  “As much as I would love nothing more than for you to die for your crimes against me and my family, I am no killer. Unlike you. Oh, yes, I have no doubt in my mind that you are to blame for Edgar’s death. The police will prove it; I am sure about that. But you will be taken, and you will spend the rest of your life rotting away in a prison cell. Or a dungeon cell. Either will serve their purpose.”

  And Raina still believes her family palace has no such dungeons. She’ll learn soon enough, when she takes over the reign. I wonder if she’ll keep them.

  “You disapprove?” the King asks, pulling me from my thoughts. I realize he is looking at me. I shake my head. “No, Your Majesty. It’s not up to me to approve or disapprove. I have no opinions on the matter. I know there are rules, protocol.” I stiffen, knowing those rules and protocol will put my ass on the line. No, that’s not true. I put my ass on the line when I crossed it with Raina.

  He nods, seeming satisfied in my answer somehow. “You’re wise. You may be salvageable yet.”

  I swallow hard, wondering what that means for my ass.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Raina

  Oh, my, God. My mother is an adulteress? What the hell. Or, at the very least, had some hot affair with this man before she was married to my father. Oh, my, God. My head is spinning. I can’t make sense of this at all. My mother is supposed to be the levelheaded one out of the Royal family. Basically, the heartless one.

  Maybe, just maybe, my mother understands me better than I could ever have imagined. And maybe she lost her heart all those years ago and never got it back. I feel a pang for my mother, and my future flashes before my eyes, looking a hell of a lot like her life.

  “Raina, please, come with me,” she says with a tremble in her voice I’ve never heard before.

  I nod, still too stunned to object and follow after her. She leads the way into my suite, but she doesn’t stop until she reaches the bedroom. I blush scarlet when her gaze lingers on the messy bed covers and crinkled sheets. The faint smell of sex still lingers in the air. Oh God. I want to die. Why did she have to go in there?

  “I need a drink,” I mutter mortified all over again. I walk out of the room and to the mini bar in the far corner and hope it’s well-stocked. I’m going to need it all to get through these next few hours.

  “Make mine a double,” my mother says, following behind me. She collapses inelegantly on the settee in the sitting area.

  For someone who is completely put together one hundred percent of the time, somehow my mother manages to look disheveled in her elegant state of appearance. It has to be an art form, one I am going to need to master at some point. My point is, my mother looks rattled. But you’d never know unless you knew her intimately. Urgh. Intimately and my mother should not be in the same sentence together.

  “What the hell was that about?” I ask, none too politely.

  She raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow, her unspoken message clear as day. As if I can judge her after what she walked into mere moments earlier. God, I can still feel where Gavin had been between my thighs, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of my hips. My cheeks warm, and I stamp out all thoughts of Gavin to the best of my ability and go about fixing our drinks.

  Mother sighs—rather overly dramatic I might add—then begins her sordid tale of lost love. Eww. I already wish I’d never said anything.

  “It was many years before your father was in the picture. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. I was betrothed to him since shortly after my birth. Our countries were wanting to make an alliance for many, many years, and when I was born the first
of my line, unable to rule as a woman”—I am so damn glad my father abolished that stupid ancient law—“it was the perfect solution to marry the two countries.”

  I hand mother her double gin and tonic, and she drinks half of it in one continuous swallow. It doesn't look like it helped as much as she'd hoped. I sit on a chair adjacent and wave my hand for her to continue, trying to look less frazzled than I am. I can’t lie, I am curious, but also somewhat reluctant to hear the details. I feel like everything I know about my parents is complete lie. She loved someone else. Does she still love him? Were my parents ever in love? Or is it all just a front? God, I feel so naive and so damn small.

  “For almost fifteen years I barely saw the boy I was arranged to wed, and even then there wasn't much interaction between us. I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that on my twenty-first birthday I was to be married, but it was such a foreign concept—one that wasn't talked of often, at least not in my presence—that it completely slipped my daily consciousness. That is until I turned twenty.

  That was when it all come to the forefront and was impossible to forget about or ignore. For the next twelve months it was all that was talked about and prepared for. Basically consuming every waking minute of palace life. I couldn’t escape my fate. By then I was already madly in love with Raul.”

  By this point in my mother’s story, we’ve both finished our drinks, so I get up and make us another. I’m somewhat relieved that when I hand her, her glass, she doesn’t continue the story. She stares off into space, clearly lost down memory lane. I think I’ve heard enough by this point and don’t encourage her to continue. I should maybe feel bad about that, but I don’t. Not yet anyway.

  Three drinks down and what seems like forever, but it is really only a couple of hours, my mother and I have been stuck in my suite just waiting, lost in our own heads. We heard the door close in the other room about thirty minutes earlier, but nothing came of that.