Della’s eyes are huge and the shine that always is lurking below the surface dulls.
“You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie. I didn’t tell you the truth.”
“Which makes it a lie.” She takes a step forward, her finger ramming me in the chest. “You lied to me—the one person who would have understood. Would have kept your stupid secrets.”
“The boys don’t even know.” I swallow the urge to shout the words. “Only my brother and sisters, and the staff from the Isle.”
“An entire country knows but I, your wife and best friend for the past ten years, didn’t know until five minutes ago?” She stabs me in the chest again and the pain on her face makes me wish it were with a knife. Because I bloody deserve one right in the gut. “I get that you kept your old life from me a secret, especially with your parents…but those boys—I love them and I loved them because they are—were you.”
I grab her wrist and place her palm over my heart, covering her hand with my own. “I’m sorry, so bloody sorry. You’re right, I should have told you, but at first I couldn’t. You assumed—everyone assumed—they were mine. And the boys, they were babies—I thought I was doing the right thing.
“Actually, you know what. I did do the right thing. I did what was best for them,” I add.
Her face softens, but her eyes are full of tears. “I know you did,” she replies softly. “I just wish that when you trusted me enough to help you, by marrying you, that you’d told me about them as well so I could have made a more informed decision about changing our relationship. About sharing my heart with you. And my biggest secret.”
Panic and anger set in. “Why, so you could keep me at a distance? Let me fuck you, but not love you? Allow you to pretend to be my wife in nearly every possible way, and then when our contract was up, you’d just leave? Fuck that, Della. Fuck that to hell and back.”
Tears fall freely down her cheeks, wounding me in ways I didn’t think possible. “I can’t have children, Colin.”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” I say fiercely.
“It matters to me.”
“Why? Why is it so bloody important to you when it’s not to me,” I demand.
“Because you let me believe that you’d already had that experience with someone. You have your boys, your sons, so it didn’t matter if I couldn’t give you that. Don’t you know how much I love you? How much I want to give you? I can’t buy you anything, can’t give you kids…can’t do anything but love your boys so that they never forget who they are and where they came from. Just like Tressie did for me.”
“You still can. Help me tell them the truth. Be at my side,” I say earnestly, wrapping my free arm around her. I all but drag her over the small space between us to me. “They love you, Della. I do, too.”
Her eyes close, teardrops glistening on her lashes. “You make it sound so easy, but I feel betrayed. I feel like I made a decision without all the facts.”
I lift my chin and stare down my nose at her. “Does it mean you want out?”
“I don’t know.”
Relief kicks at my abs, making them jump inward. “What can I do to change your mind? What can I say? Assure you? Buy for you?” I hate myself for saying that, but I’m desperate to keep her.
“Nothing.” Her beautiful eyes open. “There’s nothing you can do but give me time to think about my future.”
“What about me and my boys?”
She tilts her head to one side. “I think you need to think about your future, too, because in the past ten years I’ve never heard you call them your sons.”
Della’s right, but that’s not what’s pressing at this moment. I think this is the first time in my life that I’ve wished I could command Della to stay married to me. Use my royal prerogative to lord my rights over hers.
But I can’t because while I’m a liar, I am not a bastard.
“Come to bed with me at least. Let me hold you and in the morning we can sort it out.” I’m all but begging at this point.
“You’ll just confuse me and that’s not enough time.” She begins to pull away and I break out the big guns, as she’s fond of saying.
“What about Aiden and Pierce? What will they think if you’re not here?”
“I don’t know.” Shoulders sagging, she draws in a deep breath. “I don’t know.”
“They’ll want to see you at breakfast.”
“Fine.”
At her acquiescence, triumph fills me. “If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll join you.” I let go of her and dash off to the bathroom, then come back to an empty room. “Della?”
It’s stupid to say her name out loud, like we’re playing hide-and-seek and she’ll jump out at any moment to get me to chase her.
I stalk to the door, nearly pulling it off its hinges, and look for her up and down the hallway. I can’t find her anywhere. It’s like she’s disappeared into thin air. Only I know she hasn’t because she knows this house. It’s like a second home to her, and she is familiar with every inch of it.
A hidden panel in the wall slides back.
Theo steps out, drink in his hand and an unlit cigar between his teeth. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“I’m looking for Della.”
“That sounds like fun.” His brows wriggle. “I’ll help.”
“No.”
“But I’m enormously good at games.” His glassy eyes can’t quite focus. “All Sinclairs are.”
“Go to bed, brother. You’re drunk.”
He tips his glass to me. “Have to forget the past three days somehow. Have to forget that I don’t belong here.”
I want to go to Della. I need to go to her. Demand she comes home. Or toss her over my shoulder like my ancestors would have done.
Except…Della needs time away from me, and for once my brother needs my time.
“Now that we’re not really brothers and none of us but you are legit, I don’t see any reason for us to keep living here. I’ll have to get a job.” He sways, his smile painful to look at. “Can you imagine? Me with a real job instead of the marketing shite I do for Sinclair Enterprises?”
“Good to know you take your job seriously.”
He snorts. “Like you’ve taken yours to heart. How many times a week do you actually go in? Do you know your secretary’s name?”
“At least three days a week and”—I search my brain—“it’s Branford.”
He rolls his eyes. “That’s the name of your home secretary’s dog. No one works at SE, except the employees. They don’t need us. None of us are needed except Imogen, unless they find out about her, too. Wouldn’t that be the fucking joke of the century? ‘Sorry, but your queen’s a bastard. Try again later.’ ”
I grab his shirt and slam him against the wall. “You will be silent. We are Sinclairs and I don’t give a good damn who our parents are. Hell, for all we know, our mother could have lied to Beaumont. The fucking butler could have sired us. Or perhaps she didn’t know and preyed on Beaumont’s devotion and love to her. Did you think of that? Did you think that perhaps our mother was a lonely, bored sociopath, just like our father? For God’s sake, they fucked with people’s lives for their own amusement.”
Theo’s blue eyes go wide. “I don’t know what to think.”
Normally, I can’t reason with Theo, and a drunk Theo—there is no hope in that. “Stop thinking. Stay with your family. Stay here at St. Claire. There is no reason for you to leave.”
“No reason for me to stay.” Raw vulnerability flashes in his eyes. “Before I was nothing compared to you and Imogen. Fuck, even Char had a bloody role. And I was perfectly content with that because I was secure…I was a Sinclair. Now…I am worthless.”
Slowly I let go of his shirt and pull him to me, his drink crashing to the floor along with his unlit cigar as he holds me tight. I can’t remember the last time my brother’s actively leaned on me for support.
“You will always be a Sinclair. Always be my brother,” I tell him. “No matter what. We were sent into exile as children, to a country that swallowed us whole, and it took a viral post to make it spit us out again. If we can survive that, we can survive anything.”
He pushes me away. “You should be king, Colin. Should have taken them up on their offer because once we’re fully in the light, it will show every dirty secret and scandal we attempted to hide.”
I watch as he stumbles down the hall, disappearing around a corner.
Beaumont appears silently, like always. “I’ll watch his room tonight.”
“Is everyone home?”
He nods, then turns his pale blue eyes on me. “She wasn’t always like you remember, or the woman behind all the royal scandals Davies likes to fill your head with. When we were young…she was innocent, full of compassion and hope. We thought we would change the world.”
Instead the lot of them ruined the lives of everyone they touched. Even now I’m paying for their sins. Even now I can’t sleep with my wife and my brother thinks he’s worthless.
All because two idiots wanted their way.
“The world didn’t change. It keeps on spinning no matter how hard we wish it to stop. Royalty marries nobility to continue the line, and will continue to do so, until the very end,” I say bitterly.
He smiles sadly. “Yet the Crown Prince of the Isle of Man married a commoner.”
My title means exactly shit to Della. My honesty is what mattered and out of all the things I could have bought her, that one is priceless. “The commoner left the crown prince because she couldn’t take the lies that is in the DNA of every Sinclair. We are born to ruin,” I sneer.
“You could go to her. Apologize.”
“Don’t you think I’ve done that already?” I snap, uncaring that Beaumont is overstepping.
“Perhaps she simply needs more time.”
“I don’t need advice from you.”
“But you do need guidance,” he replies, and suddenly black rage boils up inside me.
I’m done.
I’m fucking done with being the one to pick up all the pieces. The one who gave up nearly his entire twenties to be a dad to two kids who aren’t his, a dad to twin preteen girls who died of embarrassment when I talked with them about their periods and later about sex. A dad to a brother, only two years my junior, yet emotionally stunted.
I am bloody fucking tired of being Atlas in this family.
I pivot, striding to my room like the paparazzi is on my heels. “Think I’ll have a drink. And I don’t need guidance on how to get fucked up. It comes naturally.”
I don’t pour myself a drink right away. For some reason known only to God, I sit and stew in my own anger for a good fifteen minutes before I bother to get up.
Grabbing the nearest bottle, I open it.
“Daddy?”
I whirl around to find Pierce standing behind me, his hair sticking straight up in the front. I set the bottle down and bend my knees slightly.
“What’s wrong, big boy?”
He throws himself into my open arms. “I had a bad dream. You and Della climbed up a tower and then guitars set the whole thing on fire.”
I wrap my arms around his little body. While he’s a strapping ten-year-old boy, he’s the sensitive one. He’s always been the one to know when I’ve had a rough day, the one to hold my hand far longer than his very independent brother ever did, and the one who has bad dreams after watching a Halloween episode of Scooby-Doo.
“It was just a dream. We’re okay.” I pat his back as his entire body trembles. “Want to sit with me for a bit?”
He nods as hot tears fall on my neck. “Can I sleep with you and Momma?”
Shit. Of course, he wants Della, too. “Momma went ho— to Tressie’s. She, uh, had a bad dream, too.”
“Me, too,” Aiden calls out from the doorway.
I lift Pierce in my arms and beckon his brother over. “We’ll all sleep in my bed, just like when you were little.”
“Except this time, we won’t piss the bed,” Aiden says as he climbs up the low stool I keep nearby for occasions just like this. “Promise.”
I chuckle. “Thank you for that.”
As soon as my knees hit the side of the bed, Pierce jumps off me like the little monkey he is. “I’m sleeping beside Daddy.”
Aiden’s eyes narrow. “No—I’m sleeping beside him.”
“You both are. I’m sleeping in the middle.” I pull the covers back and tuck myself in, then wait for the boys to settle in on either side of me. “Hop to it. I’m beat.”
“Thank you, Daddy. I was so scared,” Pierce whispers.
“Me, too,” Aiden agrees, and then his small hand captures mine, squeezing and letting go quickly.
They both stick one foot out, touching their toes to my legs, just like they did when they were much littler and wanted the assurance that I was really there…and wouldn’t sneak out to watch television without them.
I don’t bother to hide my smile.
Something sweet comes over me as the minutes pass, chasing away all the fury and self-righteous anger that was threatening to consume me. Threatening to turn me into something I’m not.
I lay there, staring up at the celling, listening to their breaths even out.
What if they had heard my thoughts? Would they feel this secure? Would my room be a safe harbor or something they fear because they would think themselves a burden?
To think what my careless thoughts, spoken aloud, would have done to the two precious boys who depend on me.
Not boys.
My sons.
“I love you,” I whisper and kiss the tops of their heads in turn.
Then I close my eyes and, for the first time in years, I pray for guidance that not even Beaumont can provide.