Mateo surprised them all the next day when he showed up to drive them to his castle.
Cenobia had woken Adán with the wonderful news that Bartolo was recovering well from his surgery. Then she showed him the thrilling surprise in the smaller guest bedroom closet: the queen had filled it with clothes for him. With a flick of her magic wand, La reina Roxanne had provided Adán and Cenobia with correct sizes and fashion choices.
When Adán saw a king at the door, he nearly choked on his canela.
Roman swallowed his disgruntlement while he slapped Adán on the back.
Mateo grinned like a card shark who’d just won a round.
Adán was given the place of honor in the front seat of Mateo’s Mercedes G-Class, and as they drove through the valley, passing mile after mile of vineyards, the bare, twisted vines resting after a season of growing the world’s best Tempranillo grapes, Mateo pointed out the improvements that had been possible with Cenobia’s long-ago loan.
He drove them past the airport, now a sleek hub, with improved runways that allowed them to welcome more tourists in and ship more wine and grapes out; the village’s primary, secondary and upper secondary schools, all updated buildings; and the recently christened Camino del Vino, a winding road with new wineries, many of which were funded by low-interest microloans Cenobia had offered Monte vineyard owners after Princesa Sofia had revived the kingdom’s wine scene. He spoke about infrastructure improvements that made the kingdom’s energy and water use more efficient, updates not easy when trying to preserve centuries-old granite buildings and streets, as well as changes to the tithe system that made it more like modern-day, reasonable tax collection.
With every improvement, he pointed out Roman’s contribution. Roman had overseen the dispersal, use, and repayment of every centavo of her money and had been an important advisor to Mateo before he wore the ring. But he’d also gotten involved in his own way. He’d streamlined airport security and updated training, insured that the schools had the best of appropriate safety measures and technology, and regularly worked with the Policía Local and castle guards to train them on policing justly, without bias, and with physical deterrence as the last resort.
“He’s the reason this road is as flat as the horizon,” Mateo said with a grandiose motion out his windshield. “When he didn’t like the grade, he pulled the blade operator out of the cab and ran the tractor himself.”
Cenobia grinned at Roman sitting next to her in the back seat.
“Worked on a road crew during my summers in high school,” Roman muttered.
She had a blinding vision of a deeply tanned and lush-lipped young Roman sweating in the shimmer of Texas asphalt.
“Cici, Cici, mira, mira,” Adán suddenly yelled, sounding all of five as he pointed out his window.
She instantly saw the sign he was pointing at. It was beautifully painted on tile, mounted on a stone shelter built as a refuge for a traveler or a resting spot for a vineyard worker. An image of the Mexican flag was surrounded by painted grapes and leafy vines. Ruta Trujillo was written in curlicue script. Mateo braked at the intersection. Down the road, Cenobia could see a large manor home set back among the vines.
“This used to be called Ruta Carrero,” Mateo said as he looked out Adan’s window. “The Carreros were among the Monte’s earliest settlers, but when our father was done with them, they were out of time, patience, and money. I could offer them change, but not soon enough. They were about to sell their land and lose hundreds of years of history. The Trujillo loan allowed them to hold on.”
Adán looked back at her from the front seat, his blue-grey eyes sparkling happily.
“They were the biggest proponents of naming the new bridge after the Trujillos, but after your father—” Mateo shook his head. “I mean, after Cenobia resisted, they felt this was the least they could do.”
There was no shortage of buildings with her name on it. But Ruta Trujillo christened something she and Roman had accomplished together and showed her son how their wealth could be used to balance the scales of an increasingly fraught world where those in power used it to harm instead of help.
This was the first time she’d allowed herself to feel the burning bright beam of her son’s admiring gaze.
Mi hijo.
She’d already decided to tell Adán sooner than later that she was his mother. But witnessing Bartolo’s despair at the belief that he’d lost his chance to reveal his love fully and finally understanding her father’s reluctance to support her had slid so many pieces into place. Her father couldn’t bend Cenobia or her world into an alignment that never hurt her, and Cenobia couldn’t engineer some kind of perfect reveal that mitigated all of Adán’s pain. But she loved him, she’d always wanted him in her life—no matter how much evidence she’d established to the contrary—and he deserved the truth.
She didn’t want her son growing up banging his head against an impossible-to-understand question the way she had.
Roman’s open-hearted acceptance of what she’d been afraid to tell anyone, especially him, a man whose every step was honor bound, had freed her from one of her chains. But she was still terrified. The truth was that she’d lied to this innocent child his whole life. He could condemn her. Once she was revealed as his mother, others would put together his timeline with her infamous kidnapping and make assumptions about his conception.
There would be repercussions. For her. For Adán.
But it was time to come out from behind her walls.
Roman said he’d be there for them. How long, she didn’t know.
But she shook off that million-dollar question—for now—and smiled back at Adán, allowing herself to enjoy the complex and glorious joy of the words my son, mi hijo. She would give him a couple of days in this kingdom he’d talked about dreamily, a couple of days as a child who could fantasize about being a knight and rescuing a princess from a dragon, before she made him too old, too quick.
When Mateo pulled through a tall, granite archway and into the Castillo del Monte courtyard, Adán’s eyes were as big as saucers. Standing to greet them in the wide-open space decorated in the Moorish style with checkerboard gravel pathways, potted trees, and mosaic-tile covered fountains were la Reina Roxanne Medina, her longtime bodyguard and now head of castle security, Henry Walker, and Liliana and Gabriel Esperanza y Medina, the next princesa y príncipe of the Monte del Vino Real.
They were all bundled up in luxurious winter coats, and Cenobia couldn’t thank them enough for the welcome they were creating for Adán on this blustery winter day.
Adán bowed when Mateo introduced him to the beautiful queen. Roxanne, who seldom stood on formality, nodded her head majestically then declared that the kingdom would be honored if Adán considered it his second home.
When the stunned expression on her son’s face forced Cenobia to turn away to hide her tears, Roman gave her one of his rare, gruff smiles.
The tawny-haired girl and dark-haired boy, both with abundant curls and gorgeous lashes, wanted nothing to do with formality. When Adán tried to bow to them, they immediately latched on and dragged him off to explore the castle. After a hug, Roxanne told Cenobia that their much-loved nanny Helen was waiting inside to prevent them from getting into too much trouble.
Now, the adults were gathered in Roman’s castle office, brainstorming how Cenobia could reclaim her company while keeping everyone safe.
“One theory is that the attack on the Trujillo compound was staged to push Cenobia into hiding and disrupt the car launch,” Roman said in his deep, low drawl. He wore dark grey jeans, a nearly black shirt, and a matching tie tucked into a grey wool vest that fit his torso like a dream. Leaning back against his desk with his sleeves rolled up and ankles crossed, he still looked as imposing as a four-star general. “Kidnapping Adán would have kept Cenobia distracted right when we were heading back, but the attempt felt like it was performed by the B team. They didn’t have enough manpower, their positioning was wrong, and they didn’t have the alarm specs. Every other attack was perfectly planned and executed with inside info. This was a hot mess.”
“You engaged with the attacker,” Henry said in a lazier Texas drawl. “Catch any clues to his identity?” The large blond American wasn’t as fit as the brothers, but those linebacker shoulders were still wider than his plush middle. Henry had recently married Bodega Sofia’s barrel maker, and Cenobia hoped they were enjoying lavish meals and long days in bed.
“He had a Spanish accent,” she offered.
The crevice between Roman’s brows dug in deep. “Or was he faking a pretty decent Spanish accent? Did anything about it sound off to you?”
Cenobia had worn a navy-blue Chanel dress, a cream cashmere cardigan, pearls, and a high ponytail. She rubbed the silk skirt against her knees as she thought back. She remembered the red-hot urgency to get to Adán, the instinctive response to the gun, her fear about Bartolo’s condition, and her wonder over what he revealed. She remembered her surprise, later, that she hadn’t dissociated. “I think the gleam of that knife wiped away everything else,” she said apologetically.
He moved toward her chair, stroked two fingers under her chin so she had to look up at him. “You did good; you remember that,” he ordered, furrowed green eyes looking into hers. “You relied on your training and kept that situation from getting away from us. I’ve had years to practice observing and recording during action. You haven’t.”
The touch of his fingers felt hot and commanding against her skin. She couldn’t hide her reaction to his touch, saw him register it, too. His mouth softened and she knew he was about to lick that fabulous bottom lip.
“Yes,” Roxanne said, coughing politely. “I’ve read that eyewitness error is one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions.”
Roman let go of her chin and backed up to his desk.
Roxanne and Mateo were sitting on a brocade love seat, his arm loosely draped around her. They were a queen and king on the verge of forty: one, a CEO with headquarters on four continents, and the other, one of the leading agricultural scientists in the world. They’d been married for a decade. And yet they watched Cenobia and Roman with the bitten-back grins of children.
They looked like they were about to taunt “sitting in a tree.”
La reina Roxanne nudged her husband before she said, “Maybe the outrage over the Mexico attack has spooked someone,” she said, shaking back her brown hair, cut chic and blunt just below her shoulders. In her black pencil skirt and cream heels, she looked like a Latina Aphrodite after she clambered out of her shell, got dressed, and headed into the office. “Maybe all the players aren’t as aligned as they once were, so they’re working with fewer resources.”
Roman nodded. “I contacted Glori to check something for me.”
“You contacted Glori?” Cenobia asked, relieved. She knew there’d been a moment when Roman worried that his second-in-command was the leak.
“This morning,” he said. “I’m hopin’ we’re about to get to the bottom of this thing.”
Why did the clench of his brow and the purse of his mouth say he wasn’t happy about it?
“I have to connect with my company immediately, though,” she said, hating to pull him in twelve directions but having no choice. “If Vasquez torpedoes this launch, we won’t be able to make back the losses.”
“You can use our studio to make an announcement today,” Roxanne said, leaning back and crossing her long legs.
Three deep voices immediately objected.
“I don’t think...”
“We gotta...”
“Let’s weigh our options before...”
Roxanne put up a hand. “Gentlemen.” Cenobia recognized the move from her own board meetings. “You’ve worked tirelessly over the last ten years to make the Monte del Vino Real secure. This is the low season. We have few tourists, one major road kept clear of snow coming into the valley, one train station, and one airport with two incoming flights a day. Right now, it is as close to a fortress as you could want. Let’s put that fortress to use making sure she doesn’t lose her company. We owe her that much.”
Cenobia sucked in a breath. “No, you don’t owe me anything. Certainly not the security of your family or your people.”
“We’ll be fine,” Roxanne said, turning her chocolate-brown, thickly lashed eyes on Cenobia. “That’s what I’m trying to point out to these chest-thumping lunkheads.” Her warm smile said how much she loved the lunkheads. “They lose all logic when they’re worried. But letting what you’ve built crumble without your intervention is not an option for you, any more than it would be for me or them in the same situation. I trust the security measures they’ve put into place. Roman, you have to trust yourself the way we trust you.”
If Cenobia hadn’t spent so much time staring fascinated at his face, she might have missed the tiny tics as he worked to keep his expression neutral. But the delicate jump of muscle in his jaw, the small furrow that appeared then instantly smoothed between his eyes touched a tremor in her. Pointed out a truth she hadn’t understood. All of Roman’s quiet denials—his reluctance to accept his role in the kingdom, his inability to understand how much his family needed him, and his insistence on claiming failures as “his” but never owning successes—they were because her warrior, her prince, the savior of humans, didn’t trust himself.
He had confidence in his abilities, his gifts, as his mother had called them. But not in who he innately was. And that made him want to reject the family that put faith in him.
As if verifying her world-quaking realization, Roman said, “I should’ve fixed this already.” His gravelly voice fell to the floor. “I’m sorry.”
His response made her want to put her arms around him. Then give him a smack. Why couldn’t he see himself as the miracle that he was?
“Joder,” Mateo muttered, sounding as upset as she felt and more weary as he looked out the ancient leaded window. “You’re not an island. If something needs fixing, we can help fix it.”
Apparently, any reluctance the king had to the queen’s plan had been cleared up by his brother’s resistance.
Roxanne quickly squeezed her husband’s knee and then stood. “We CEOs are going to work out how Cenobia’s going to take back her company. You boys figure out how to keep her safe doing it.”
She flourished a hand at Cenobia. “Shall we?”
Cenobia hesitated. She didn’t want to abandon him.
But Roxanne gave her a look that said, Trust me.
Out in the hallway, after she’d closed the heavy door on the still-silent room, Roxanne whispered. “It’s going to be all right. It’s better if we leave.” They began to walk, their heels tapping against the ancient terracotta tile. “They can machismo it out. Sometimes they have to punch each other before they hug and cry.”
Cenobia stopped. “They’re going to punch each other? I don’t want to cause any—”
Roxanne tugged her forearm to get her walking again. “It’s not you. This has been building for years; I’m glad they’re finally getting a chance to clear the air.” She sighed. “If I didn’t have an excuse to leave, I might have taken a shot at Roman.”
They walked under a ceiling decorated with beautiful dime-sized tiles, passed suits of armor and through archways shaped into the Moorish U. La reina Roxanne certainly seemed bloodthirsty enough to stroll the halls of a medieval castle.
Cenobia caught the women grinning at her, her smile a lush, glistening red.
“The shot you took hit its mark,” Roxanne purred, hooking her arm through Cenobia’s as they walked.
Cenobia was at a loss how to reply. She’d been eighteen and another person the last time she’d talked about her love life with girlfriends.
“Thank God you had lots of practice overcoming insurmountable odds,” Roxanne said. “Roman wanted you, but he would have ripped out his tongue before admitting it.”
“You knew?” Cenobia asked, surprise making her artless.
“Suspected,” she said. “Then when you walked off that plane and announced you’d been the person behind the loan all along...” Roxanne’s eyes widened scandalously as she pressed a hand to her chest. “That bit of drama made me miss my younger years. You’d finally found a chink in the armor of my impenetrable brother-in-law.”
An intimate, enthusiastic Roxanne Medina was a thing to behold.
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“Sweetie, I’m thrilled,” Roxanne said, patting her arm. “You’re the first thing he’s wanted that he’s allowed himself to touch.”
Cenobia dropped her eyes to the tile. “I feel like I’ve been chasing after him like a fan hungry for an autograph.”
Roxanne’s pat became a rub. “If it’s any consolation, his brother was the same way,” she said, softer. “I handed him my heart on a silver platter, and even then, he almost screwed it up.”
They’d stopped walking. Roxanne faced Cenobia, looking at her, considering. Finally, she said in an almost-whisper, “You know you’re going to have to tell him you love him. He won’t say it first.”
There was no use denying it. Cenobia’s love for Roman felt as obvious as the clothes she wore, followed her into a room just like her favorite perfume. Of course, this genius of a woman would figure it out.
“I’ve faced a lot,” Cenobia said, as quietly as she could. “Telling him I love him is still one of the scariest things I can imagine.”
Roxanne gave her a heart-filled smile. “I know.” This self-made billionaire, this woman who’d built herself up from humble beginnings then risked her whole self by admitting her love for a prince, did indeed know. “Please believe me. It’s worth it.”
The reina was like a glowing beacon of joy, an advertisement for wedded bliss. But if Roman maintained his penchant for self-denial with her?
“Let’s bullet point it out,” Roxanne said. “One CEO to another. If you don’t tell him, you deny yourself a lifetime of access to that body.”
Cenobia startled at Roxanne’s mildly lecherous grin.
“I’m married, not blind,” she smirked. Then her smile dimmed. “You go back to Mexico and live lonely. Or you find a man half as good, knowing he’s going to love you a tenth as well.”
She sobered completely and squeezed both of Cenobia’s biceps. “And you abandon one of the best men in the world to his worst tendencies.”
Roman, alone and lonely. There was no justice in the world if her warrior prince was cursed to that life.
“I told myself I wouldn’t hide anymore,” Cenobia whispered.
“Then don’t,” Roxanne said, her hold on Cenobia’s biceps feeling valuable and fortifying. “The risk is scary. But the rewards are...”
For the first time, this titan of a woman fell speechless, unable to find the words as she searched for them in the air and looked around this castle hall where she was queen. She focused back on Cenobia with a helpless smile and tears in her beautiful, brown eyes.
The jarring scrape of stone against stone and then giggles behind a suddenly moving tapestry surprised them both. They quickly wiped their eyes then Cenobia watched, astonished, as Adán came out from behind the precious fabric carrying Liliana on his back, followed by Gabriel and an older women who must have been their nanny, Helen. The solemn-faced woman was impressively intimidating even though she was covered, like the children, in cobwebs.
“Mamá!” Liliana exclaimed, startled, her hazel-green eyes wide.
“Liliana?” Roxanne replied, her eyes narrowing.
“She tripped and she fell and she hurt her ankle,” Gabriel chattered while Helen picked a crawling spider out of his dark-brown curls. “And Helen said she was okay but Liliana said she couldn’t walk so Adán said he’d carry her.”
Helen and Roxanne exchanged a look.
“Sí, I’m fine now,” Liliana added quickly, all skinny legs and arms as she clambered off Adán’s back and hopped down on her sneakers without even twinge. “Muchas gracias, Adán.”
He smiled at her and gave a bow. He’d worn khaki trousers and a white shirt which Roman had helped him pair with navy suspenders embroidered with tiny, snow-capped mountains. Adán had taken to rolling up his shirtsleeves like Roman.
“De nada, princesita,” he said, shoving his wavy curls out of his slate-grey eyes as he smiled down at her. “And thank you for showing me those chulada tunnels.”
Adán spoke to the princess with all of the gentle condescension of an almost-teenager.
Liliana looked up at him with eyes that were wide and soft, full of rainbows and pink hearts.
“Wanna see the throne room?” Gabriel asked, blissfully unaware.
“Yeah!” Adán replied like the child that he was.
The two boys ran off. Liliana wandered to Helen, folded her fingers through the older woman’s, and followed behind, slow and dreamily.
Roxanne gave a wild-eyed look to Cenobia. “Oh my God. What was that?”
Cenobia shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s happened to him before.”
“That’s never happened to her before!” Roxanne said. She ran a hand into her hair. “Joder.”
Cenobia laughed gently. It was reassuring that la reina didn’t have an answer to everything. She echoed Roxanne’s earlier move and wound a supportive arm through hers.
“First, let’s figure out how to save my company,” she said as they started down the hallway after the children. “Then we’ll discuss how to muddle through puberty.”