Unfaded Glory (23 page)

“What's he going to do?” Damara swallowed her bile.

He tsked. “Either you will have me or you will not, Princess. You don't get this information out of the goodness of my heart. Say yes. Say yes and save your ranger. Your new friends. It's never just the target that gets hurt. It would be a shame if some little girl hoping to see a princess was blinded or crippled by shrapnel.”

“Save my ranger? Have you seen him?” Damara dared ask. Grisha seemed to get some sick pleasure out of telling her the truth.

“He let you escape him. He must be done with you.”

“You're horrible.” She kept her expression neutral, but his words were ripping out her guts.

“And yet you will come to see things my way. Or have you forgotten all of what your father taught you?”

“Don't you dare speak of my father. You didn't know him.”

“Oh, but I did. He despised me, but I knew him. He would be so disappointed in you for putting any of your needs above the people. Do they deserve to suffer for what you want? Abele's plans are already in place. No matter where you go, or who you're with, he'll be able to get to you. Just like I did.”

He yanked her up off the floor and kissed her hard.

She didn't fight, because she knew it was useless, and she realized he'd want her to fight. He liked that she was rebellious and defiant. The fact that Byron had shot him only made Grisha want her more. She thought about biting his lips, but, again, he'd like that.

So instead she showed him what it would be like if he forced this on her. She held her lips hard and dry; there was no feminine softness to her mouth or in the way he held her. She was stiff and cold, carved out of ice.

She displayed no reaction either way, not fear, no revulsion and certainly not pleasure. In her head, she'd retreated to that place she went when people treated her like a princess doll instead of a person. The hours of hair and makeup, fittings, grooming, pinching and pulling on her body as though it were something that belonged to the world at large and not her.

Because she knew Grisha was right.

Would she really risk all of these people? She should've stayed on Castallegna and done whatever Abele instructed while pretending to be the perfect vacuous doll. Then she could've started a rebellion and led her people to freedom that way.

Or she could've just slipped something into Abele's soup. Because then only he would die. No one else would ever be hurt by him again.

But that was pain and rage talking. No matter what Abele had done, Damara wasn't capable of murder.

Even knowing that Abele had killed their father. It was possible Grisha was lying, but it had given voice to what Damara had suspected for a long time. After her conversation with Abele, hearing the venom and hatred in his voice, she knew he was capable of anything.

“Fine, I'll go with you. But no one else gets hurt.”

“I knew you'd see it my way.”

Then she stepped out into the chilly predawn and headed toward the end of all good things.

Damara tried not to think about Byron as she slid into the backseat, but she couldn't help it. He filled her thoughts. She wondered if he was hurting, if he'd understood her message.

Though she supposed it didn't matter. This was the way things had to be.

She shifted in her seat, sore from the previous day, but she enjoyed the discomfort. Pain made memories brighter, more real. She'd need it to remember everything as clearly as she wished.

Her husband had made her feel this way, the man she'd fallen in love with. Not some crown or bank account she was supposed to give herself to for God and country.

She looked at Grisha sitting next to her in the backseat and she wondered just how she was going to escape him. It seemed an impossible task. He'd knit a rather neat little trap around her, she realized as the driver started the car.

She wished her father was there. He'd know what to do.

Except he wasn't, and wishing he was there didn't make it so. It didn't give her any answers or guidance. She had to rely on herself.

“Already plotting your escape, Princess?” His voice slashed through the silence.

“No.”

“Don't lie to me.” His voice was soft, but the threat there was not.

“I'm not plotting my escape. I was thinking about all of my options.” Escape. Options. Same thing to her.

“Which are?”

“None.”

“That's not necessarily true. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, Damara,” Grisha said softly.

Damara stilled the shudder before it rolled through her. “You say this like you're the one who has to marry someone he doesn't want.”

“You will want me in time.” He said it as if she were just a little girl who didn't quite understand the birds and the bees.

Damara shook her head. “No, Grisha. I will not.”

No, no matter what Grisha did to her, it would never be anything like Byron.

The car was big, lush. Everything had been designed with an eye of opulence and comfort, but none of that mattered to Damara. In fact, she wondered how many people's lives had paid for everything he'd tried to give her.

His wealth was dirty.

“Your father indulged you too much, Princess. You will see. It is always better to have money. Even in your precious democracies, money is what eases your way.”

Damara was filled with fire. She wanted to blurt out that she didn't care about money. That all she wanted was Byron, but Grisha laughed.

“The passionate fire of first love burns in your eyes. It is the love that would let nations fall if only to be together.” He laughed again. “You may think whatever you like, and, in private, you may say whatever you like. In front of my brother, or in front of my men, you will be respectful or you will be punished. Do you understand?”

There was nothing he could do to her. Nothing.

“Or perhaps I should say your whipping girl will be punished. In the days of old, royalty would have peasants who would endure their punishments for them. I would never want to mar a face as beautiful as yours. So your whipping girl shall be punished every time you disobey or embarrass me.”

She was going to be sick.

Instead of showing him any reaction, she nodded coolly. “I understand.”

“Good.” He took a drink of his whiskey. “Tell me, Damara, what was it that made you love him?”

“Does it matter?” She shrugged and looked out the window.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Indulge me.”

“Or you'll whip someone?” She forced herself to look at him.

“No, Damara. I told you that you may speak as you like when we're in private. But what would it hurt to let me know you?”

“You don't want to know me. You want me to be your windup Princess Barbie to Gangster Ken.”

He laughed. “In public, yes. That is what I want. Although I know there is another you beneath the doll. The you that knows Krav Maga. The you that likes American pop culture.”

“That me is the one who thinks privilege by blood is wrong. You have nothing in common with her.” Damara turned her head and looked out the window.

When he offered her a whiskey of her own, she didn't turn it down. She downed it in one gulp. It burned like hellfire all the way down, but then it was warm, languid and sweet.

“Better?”

She studied him again. He wasn't ugly. He might have been handsome to some women if he wasn't a murdering psychopath.

“Why me?” She sighed.

“Because you're not afraid of me.”

She was most certainly afraid of him, but she wasn't going to let that control her actions. Damara had more people to worry about in this scenario than herself.

“So if I start being afraid of you, will you get bored and let me go?”

“I may get bored, but I will never let you go. You belong to me, Damara.” His laughter chilled her blood. “See, all I have to do is say something you don't like and your eyes flash with rebellion.”

Damara turned away from him and looked out the window again, staring blankly out onto the landscape that had once offered her succor. She could smell jasmine, and that made her doubly heartsick.

It was both wonderful and terrible to be home.

She swallowed her grief like so much bile and exited the car. Damara half expected a pack of paparazzi to meet them, but there was no one.

“There is no one to meet us?” she asked.

“No. I don't want your brother to know we're on the island.”

“He has to already know. He has spies everywhere.”

“No, Kulokav interests now have control of the docks, the airport and the spies he has planted. We're already running Castallegna right under his nose, Princess.”

Her stomach twisted on itself. “So did you have a hand in killing those Council members?”

“Those were your brother's orders, Highness. But I would not have hesitated to do so if it would give me you.”

She'd stopped trying to argue with him about what did and what did not belong to him. He'd made up his mind, and no amount of correction from her was going to change that. There was no reason to set herself a harder course than what she already had— meaning she had to pick her battles. Nomenclature wasn't worth fighting over.

“Do you think your ranger will come?” Grisha asked.

“No. I was just a mission to him.”

“You put on a very convincing show for the world. You're going to have to top it if you want to convince people you left of your own free will.”

Why he thought she'd ever do that was beyond her. “It wasn't a show on my part, Grisha. I love him.”

He suddenly grabbed her. “Say that again and I will kill him.”

She didn't need to say it. It was already tattooed on her heart. But she didn't defy Grisha; she'd already pushed him as far as she'd be able to.

Grisha must've seen the surrender in her eyes because he released her. “Glad we understand each other. We'll go to our beach house.”

As the car drove down the winding cobbled roads of Castallegna City, Damara realized the route was familiar.

He was taking her to what had once been her mother's retreat house. It was where she went with the children when the Council was in session or she'd just had enough of the pomp of court.

How could Abele have given it to him?

Some of their best memories were there.

When the car took the last turn, those memories came rushing back to her. The happy days spent on the sand and in the water, her mother's large, floppy hat that was supposed to shield her from the sun but blew away on the island breezes more often than not.

She and Abele in the lagoon while he taught her to swim and showed her various fish.

That was all gone.

Now there was some gangster living in her mother's house. The house where she'd fallen in love with Damara's father, the house where she'd given birth to Abele and to Damara. The house where she'd taken her last breath trying to bring another son into the world.

She wanted to burn it down.

Damara would rather see it and everything in it disappear to ash along with the love and life that had happened in there than see it sullied by Kulokav.

“It was your mother's, yes?”

She nodded silently.

Damara didn't speak until they went inside the house. It was completely empty. Everything was gone. From the pictures of her grandmother, to her mother's favorite chair, it was all gone.

Empty. Just like Abele.

“Where are all my mother's things? Tell me they've been put into storage.” She turned to face him. “Tell me.”

For once the big man had nothing to say.

“Did you do this? Did you have her things removed?”

“That would have been unnecessarily cruel,” Grisha acknowledged.

“One day, I will cry for the boy that my brother was. Today is not that day.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

D
AMARA
KNEW
THAT
Byron would come for her.

She couldn't see him, but she knew he was out there watching, waiting for the right time to make his move. Castallegna wasn't very big. She was torn between wanting him to hurry and wanting him to flee.

If he fled, she knew that he and Abele would both live.

It wasn't long before Grisha announced it was time to go to the palace and speak with Abele.

“Are you going to kill him?” she asked.

“Do you want me to?”

“No. I don't want anyone to die.” She meant that from the bottom of her heart.

“What if he tries to kill you?”

She exhaled heavily. Part of her wanted to say that, yes, he should defend her life. But she knew he'd use it as an excuse to kill her brother whether her life was in danger or not.

“Even then.”

“You know that in the eyes of Castallegnian law, you are my wife already. Even if I still have to make you a widow to the Americans.”

“Just stop, Grisha. Stop. You have me. I'm here. I've done everything you wanted.” She was so tired of all this talk of death.

“You're not in my bed.”

“You were so sure I'd come to want you—where is that confidence now?”

Grisha sighed. “I will give you one month. No more. I want sons.”

More men like him who would murder, rape and steal? No. She'd never have his child. She'd drink the yam root tea to prevent conception until her fingers turned yellow if she had to.

“You are suspiciously quiet.”

“Of course I'm quiet. You're taking me to see my brother after he threatened to kill me and crowned himself king. I'd be stupid not to be worried.”

Her brain had been set to spin since they'd arrived on the island. Part of her kept hoping that Byron would show up with some elite commando force and fix everything. It was just a spoiled little-girl princess thing for her to think, and yet she couldn't dismiss it.

When they got to the palace—a sprawling, whitewashed, hacienda-style estate—they were met by guards she'd never seen before. In the time she'd been gone, he'd changed everything.

She inhaled the scent of jasmine, and it fortified her. All her fears and doubts didn't disappear, but they were caged and quieted.

They were led into the formal receiving room as if they were guests instead of royals.

She thought it would be terrible to face her brother, and seeing him there on the throne, wearing her father's sash and driving their country to ruin, it was terrible.

But not for the reasons she thought it would be.

He was not better than she was. He was not stronger. He was not
more.

Damara realized that she had her own power, her own worth, and it had nothing to do with her blood, her birthright or the crown everyone wanted to keep on her head.

She finally understood what Byron had been talking about when he called her the Jewel.

She was as kind as Abele was cruel. She was as gentle as he was ruthless. She tried to find some empathy for each person she met, and all Abele had was greed.

Damara had always been loved for herself. The people loved her; her father loved her. And Byron loved her not because of her name, or her crown, but because of herself.

That realization changed something in her, made it solid and whole. There was nothing Abele could do to take it away from her now.

“The prodigal daughter returns,” he sneered.

“Where are my mother's things?”

“Destroyed.”

She pursed her lips. “I see.”

“I don't think you do.” He leaped from the throne to his feet. “I don't think you do at all, sister.”

Damara didn't flinch away. She stared him down.

“Do you think that I won't punish you for what you've done?”

“I'm already punished, Abele. But I think I'm finished with that. For a long time I thought I was the spoiled and coddled princess who didn't know much of the world. It turns out I was wrong. You've been so spoiled that you don't really understand what a weight that crown should be on your head. You've been talking about what a disgrace I am? How I've shamed you? Well, Abele, I say the same about you.”

He raised his hand to strike her, but when she didn't cower, his conviction wavered.

“You are an embarrassment to Castallegna, to our mother, to our father, to me. You shame the very throne you sit on.” She motioned to Grisha. “You've given control of our country to gangsters because you were so afraid someone was going to take your power away. So instead, you gave it away with both hands.”

A guttural sound was torn from him. “Watch how you speak to me.”

“No, I won't. That hand that you've raised to strike me? It's the one that taught me how to swim, that helped teach me to read. It was with that hand I learned to love you, Abele. Now I'm just sorry that boy is dead.”

“I'm right in front of you. I live. I breathe.” He patted his chest.

“And still I say you're dead. You're dead to Castallegna and to me.” She leaned in toward him. “Worst of all, and deep down inside you know it's true, you're dead to yourself.”

“That doesn't even make sense, Damara.” He snorted and returned to sit on the throne.

Abele tried to act as if he wasn't affected, but he was. This was his way of retreat.

“Control your woman, Grisha.”

Grisha shrugged.

“What will you do? Hit me? Kill me? That doesn't change who you are or what you've done. You're still the same inside whether I'm breathing or not.”

“Keep a civil tongue in your head. If you don't, I can still blow that town to bits. My operatives are still in place.”

“You're such a coward,” she spat. “Hurting innocent people and children because you didn't get what you wanted. You disgust me.”

“Yet, you are still at my mercy. Guards!” he called.

Except no one came.

“Guards!” he yelled again.

“There is no one coming for you, princeling.” Grisha smiled coldly. “And you are sitting in my chair.”

Abele didn't know what to do; the smug expression on his face melted like wax in the summer sun. All his hopes and dreams had just shattered around him.

“This is treason.”

“As are most regime changes.” Grisha shrugged. “There is no one who will stand up for you. No one who will hear you. You are not a beloved leader. You have no army.”

Army?
The way he said that, it was if he were saying that he did have an army. She didn't want troops on Castallegna. They'd be nothing but mercenaries and thugs. Even if there were never any battles, Castallegna would be a war zone.

She had to stop this, but she had to do it without bloodshed.

* * *

W
HEN
HE
HEARD
G
RISHA
call for a guard, Byron took a deep breath and reported. He'd been able to snatch a guard's uniform when he found the central command post in the palace.

The room he entered was obviously the throne room, and Grisha had faced off with Abele, with Damara watching.

“See, they do not answer to you any longer,” Grisha said. Then he looked at Byron. “Escort my wife to her new chambers.”

His wife? Byron imagined twenty ways he could kill him with various objects around the room.

“Grisha, no. You promised.”

“I am not a man of promises,
malenkaya.
I promised no such thing. Go with the guard, unless you want to watch.”

Damara stood there, anguish on her beautiful face.

“More to life,” Byron said in a low voice.

Damara's eyes grew round, and she dropped her head in faux subservience. He allowed her to walk in front of him because she was the one who knew where they were going.

As soon as they were out of earshot, she shoved him into an alcove and threw her arms around him.

“Are you crazy?”

He ripped off the mask. “Me? What's wrong with you?”

“You don't hate me?” she asked softly.

“I'm pissed that to find you I had to steal an inferior bike, camp out in a field and I haven't had a shower. But why would I hate you?”

He tried to make light of the situation they were in by being blasé, although he was anything but. It felt so good to have her in his arms again, so good to know that she did love him. He was sure she did, but that validation of her embrace made everything better—made it worth it.

“Because I was gone. I left, I didn't tell you... You told me to stay there.”

“Survival is the only promise I want from you, Princess. You didn't have a choice.”

“Oh, God, Byron. I don't know what to do. Grisha has declared himself king because the Council validated the proxy marriage. He's inserted all of his own people in the palace guard and he has some kind of army of mercenaries. He's going to kill my brother. Please don't let him.” She buried her face in his neck. “Please.”

When she looked up at him, he knew he was going to save her damned brother. Against his better judgment, and against what every instinct in his body was telling him. Every instinct but the one to please her.

There wasn't a curse word invented that could describe his feelings about this development. She'd been right about him, right that when it came down to it, he wouldn't hurt her. Even if it was the best way to keep her safe.

“Would it be too much to hope for that you'd go wait somewhere safe?”

She arched a brow.

“Fine. Get to a phone and call the Interpol office in Greece.” He shoved a piece of paper in her hand with the number written on it. “Tell them who you are, that the Kulokav brothers are on the island and, as princess, you give them authority in Castallegna.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, Damara. More than you could ever know.” He turned away from her and headed back into the throne room.

His mouth wasn't usually in the habit of writing checks that his ass couldn't cash, but with Abele holding a gun on Grisha and Grisha standing like a bull about to charge, it was going to be ugly.

They both turned to look at the intruder, and Grisha smiled that cold grin of his.

“It is the real cowboy motherfucker.” He quoted Miklos's words about him. “I'm so glad I get to kill you.”

He was out of options.

And he decided since Grisha thought he was a cowboy, he might as well live up to his reputation. He drew his guns and fired.

But he aimed low and blew out both men's left knees. A great shot, if he did say so himself. Then he hit the deck, because they fired back as they fell.

Abele was softer, not as used to pain. He dropped his weapon immediately, howling and clutching at his leg.

Grisha, however, was made of sterner stuff. He fired a good shot, and it grazed Byron's shoulder. It was like being burned with a hot pan, a sizzle and an unpleasant surprise, but it wasn't debilitating.

He launched himself at Grisha and went for the already injured knee to bring him to submission. Grisha would have kept fighting if Byron hadn't knocked his head into the marble floor a dozen times.

Byron rummaged through his utility belt and found a pouch of zip ties. They were harder to get out of than traditional handcuffs, but that didn't stop him from putting three on Grisha and two on Abele.

Abele was still moaning about his leg. When he opened his mouth to speak, Byron stopped him.

“I promised her I wouldn't kill you. Don't make me break that promise.” Yet as he looked into the man's eyes, he knew killing him would be a trial on his soul he didn't want to bear. Not only would it have hurt Damara but the bastard had her eyes. He couldn't put a bullet in a man who looked at him with his wife's eyes.

For as happy as he thought he'd be when he got to end these two, he realized this was better. He'd saved Damara. He'd saved her country, and it was a good thing.

He'd done a good thing.

And he didn't have to destroy or kill to do it.

That knowledge gave him hope that he could build something when this was over. Byron didn't know how he'd do it, but he knew he could never be parted from her forever.

Renner had promised him retirement with full benefits if he did this thing, and he'd accepted. He wasn't going to let the man go back on his word. He'd take it and come here and...and what? What would he do?

Serve the princess?

His brain wandered to all the ways he could serve her, but that was only fantasy. Reality was he was still a weapon, and here he'd be a weapon without a purpose.

And yet that was secondary to his need to be with Damara.