Princess from the Shadows Maisey Yates (16 page)

“I’M SORRY.”

Carlotta opened her eyes and looked up into Rodriguez’s handsome, tormented face. Everything from the night before came flooding back.

“Why?” she asked, rolling to her side, not caring that the sheets had fallen to her waist.

“I was. not myself last night.”

“You were in pain,” she said. “Your father …”

“It’s still no excuse for how I spoke to you.”

“Rodriguez, I’m not mad at you for that. I…. We hadn’t slept together in a week. I get that the timing looked a little bit suspect. But I did want you. I do. I don’t regret this part of our relationship at all.”

“What about it do you regret?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head, biting back the admission that was hovering on the edge of her lips.
I regret that I love you, and you will never love me back
.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. If I did …”

“Rodriguez, I’m not going to break,” she said. It was like speaking in code. She wondered if he knew she was talking about feelings, not her body. She wondered if he was talking about feelings.

“That’s comforting to know,” he said, giving her a look that made her feel hot all the way down to her toes.

“You should get ready,” she said.

He nodded once and got out of bed, dragging his pants on and walking out of the door. He had to go back to his room so he could find a suit for the press conference. Get showered and presentable.

Carlotta flung herself backward onto the pillows and threw her arm over her face. “I’m such an idiot.” Even still, she smiled.

Her phone vibrated from her purse on the floor and she rummaged around until she found it. “Hello?”

“Carlotta, is that you?”

Carlotta sat up again. “Mother? Is everything all right?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know if you heard the news about Anna?”

Her brother’s ex-intended, the woman he had ditched for his new fiancée, Allegra. “What about Anna?”

“She’s pregnant.”

Carlotta’s mouth dropped open. “No! She is?

What is Alex going to do? Is he still going to marry Allegra or is he …?”

“It’s not Alessandro’s baby,” Zoe said crisply.

“Oh.” That truly shocked Carlotta since Anna was about as demure and predictable as they came. Not that that was a bad thing, truly. Carlotta had spent a long time wishing she’d stayed as buttoned up and predictable as sweet Anna. “So … who is …?”

“Leo. Leo Jackson.”

Carlotta snorted a laugh in spite of herself. “Those Jacksons.” Alex’s fiancée’s brother had now hooked up with Alex’s ex-fiancée. It was like a soap opera. And for the first time, she wasn’t the star. And yet, at the moment she didn’t really care.

“Well, I hope she’s very happy with him.”

“How can you say that?” Her mother sniffed. “Now we have no hope! If Alessandro is going to come to his senses—and he must—we needed all the help we could get. But now Anna is …”

“Mother, he doesn’t love Anna.”

“What does love have to do with anything?”

Carlotta blew out a breath. Her mother, who had never shared a room with her husband, who would never dream of putting her own needs before duty, didn’t really shock her with the statement. And a month ago, Carlotta would have agreed. She’d agreed to marry Rodriguez without love after all.

But now, now she knew differently.

“Love has everything to do with it. Everything to do with life.”

“You sound strange. Chipper.”

“I am. I’m in love.” The admission freed her, made her feel light.

“Please tell me it’s with Prince Rodriguez or I really will be apoplectic.”

“It is, Mama,” she said, using the name she hadn’t called her mother by in years. “He’s wonderful. And I hope Alex and Allegra, and Anna and Leo, are as happy with each other as I am with him. Tell Anna congratulations if you see her.”

“I will,” her mother said, clearly still not happy, but mollified. “Give Luca a kiss for me.”

Carlotta’s heart suddenly felt too large for her chest. “I will. Promise.”

She was tempted to tell her mother about Rodriguez’s father. But she didn’t really want to add to the burden.

“Ciao.”

“Ciao
, Mama,” she said, hanging up the phone.

Carlotta laughed into the empty room. Her mother had called her. About someone else’s scandal. She ranked as a confidante again.

And she didn’t care. She was glad to speak to her mother, so happy not to feel the icy reserve anymore. To hear warmth, as much as her mother was capable of.

But she didn’t care whether her mother approved of her. Whether her father approved of her. It didn’t matter. She was happy. Content. Luca was taken care of. She had balance in her life. She wasn’t hiding, wasn’t pretending to be someone she just couldn’t be. She wasn’t forgetting she was a woman, she was being both mother and wife. Well, eventual wife.

And it was
her
life. No one else’s.

She didn’t know why it had taken so long to figure that out. Why half of the guilt and baggage she carried around with her had to do with other people. The way they saw her. Whether or not
they
were happy with how she was living. For some reason, she’d bought into the idea that she somehow didn’t deserve love. That she couldn’t have it.

But she did. She could.

She rolled out of bed and went to her closet, hunting for what to wear. It was strange, the kind of freedom being in love with Rodriguez brought.

Her supposed love for Gabriel had felt oppressive, secret and shameful even before she’d found out about his wife. But her love for Rodriguez had come spilling out of her. She hadn’t wanted to hide it.

And he needed love. Even if he didn’t think he could ever give it back, he needed to feel some.

She couldn’t grieve his father. Not knowing what he’d done to Rodriguez. Not knowing how he’d hurt him. How he’d taken a little boy’s world and filled it with fear and pain. She couldn’t erase the past, but she could help make a better future. For all of them.

That started with supporting him while he gave the hardest speech he would ever have to give.

Carlotta sat in the front row at the press conference, her heart in her throat, as she waited for Rodriguez to come and stand before them. Before her and the army of press who had assembled themselves at Santa Christobel’s palace for the second time that week.

She wished she had some way to relieve the nervous tension in her body, but she didn’t want to fidget like a child in a room full of reporters with cameras.

When Rodriguez strode in, she felt everyone in the room draw breath. She did too. He was wearing a black suit, less unruly than normal, but nowhere near respectable.

He moved to the front of the room and held up a hand to silence the chatter. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Off his bearing, the authority he brought with him. Sometime in the past weeks, he’d changed.

Or maybe he hadn’t changed. Maybe he was simply free to show the man beneath the layers of protection he had wrapped himself in.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said. Then he looked at her, met her gaze. And he didn’t look away. “I know it has been in the news already, but I can confirm that my father, King Carlos Anguiano, passed away last night. It is the end of an era for Santa Christobel, and yet I hope we can look to the future. I pledge to rule our country with honor, with integrity and with all the strength I possess.”

A murmur of agreement and a sweeping click of camera shutters went through the room.

“And while this is a sad day,” Rodriguez continued, “I hope the sadness can be tempered by happy news. I recently learned that I have a son. An heir.”

The wave of shocked noise that went through the crowd was short and sharp, and she realized she had gasped too. He didn’t mean. Had he fathered a child out of wedlock? Had he just found out? Her heart pounded so fast she was afraid it was going to drain the blood from her head. Afraid she might pass out cold.

Rodriguez waited for everyone to quiet again and she clasped her hands together, squeezing them tight, trying hard to keep her vision from tunneling.

“Luca Santina is my son, with Princess Carlotta Santina, my fiancée, who I know you’ve already met. He is heir to the throne of Santa Christobel. And he is now to be called Prince Luca Santina Anguiano. He has my name. My protection.”

It was hard to breathe. And it was hot. So hot in this tiny, blasted room. The roar of the press was deafening and she could feel them pressing in closer. Nearer to Rodriguez. To her. She couldn’t force her thoughts into order.

Finally, a woman in the back was able to make herself heard over the din. “He is … your son?”

“Yes,” Rodriguez said, his voice clipped. “I am Luca’s father. I think that’s fairly clear based on my previous statements. Are there any other questions?”

The room exploded with noise and Carlotta could only sit and listen to it all happening around her.

“How long have you known?”

“When did your affair with the princess begin?”

“Why didn’t you claim him years ago?”

A reporter rushed over to her where she was sitting. “Princess, how did you bring yourself to forgive Prince Rodriguez for leaving you pregnant and alone?”

“I … I didn’t need to …”

The man pressed. “Or were you simply not certain if he was the father, or if it was another man?”

She felt her cheeks get hot, her entire body shivering from the inside out. Anger, fear and the intense desire to hide from the intensity of the scrutiny. She hated this. More than almost anything else, she hated being at the center of the frenzy.

A reporter on her other side grabbed her arm, turning her to face him. “Does this mean the only Santina bastard is no longer a bastard?”

There was no air. There was just a teeming throng of suit jackets crushing in on her. Elbows in her face as all the reporters jockeyed for position, as they tried to be the first one to ask the questions, to come up with the most lurid, insulting, vile comments imaginable.

She was pinned in her chair, bodies in front of her and behind her, pressing in. She just wanted to cover her head and hide until they went away, but she couldn’t move even that much.

“Everyone move back,” she said. The roar of questions was deafening, a sound wall that defeated her.

“Move back.” Rodriguez’s voice cut through the noise and the reporters began to move away as he physically pushed them away from her.

His dark eyes were on fire with intensity as he grabbed one man, the first one to put his hands on her, and pulled him back forcibly. The other man started to move back in but Rodriguez took hold of him again, his upper lip curled into a snarl. “I said move back, or you may not ever move again.”

This time the reporter didn’t challenge him. The entire crowd seemed to shrink beneath Rodriguez’s rage, moving away from her. She could breathe again.

“You have all forgotten that Princess Carlotta Santina is royalty. She is my future wife, your future queen. You will all hand in your press badges as you leave. What happens with them later, whether or not you will see them returned, will be decided at my convenience. For now, all you need to know is that Luca is my son. Carlotta is my fiancée. There is no salacious story beneath that. You will give them both the respect they are due.”

He was lying. For her. For Luca. He was doing so much more than giving Luca his name. He was claiming him in the most unbreakable, unquestionable way. Taking the birthright from his future biological children and bestowing it onto her son.

Rodriguez walked to where she was sitting and extended his hand. She grasped it and he pulled her to a standing position. She held on to him like a lifeline as they walked out of the press room, her breathing shaky, labored.

She didn’t speak, and neither did he, until they were closeted in his office.

Then her entire body started shaking. “I hate this.
Dio
, but I hate this.”

Rodriguez stood in front of her, looking at a loss. “What happened was out of line. Beyond the pale. I have half a mind to have some of those men arrested. If I’d had any idea …”

“It’s always like that though, isn’t it? Maybe not so physical. Maybe not even in person. But the questions and the accusations.”

“It’s over now, I have declared Luca to be my son. He is my heir. You have no name written in the place designated for a father on his birth certificate, do you?” She shook her head. “Write in mine.”

“He’s … not your biological son,” Carlotta said softly.

“No. But what does that matter, Carlotta? I will protect Luca, I swear it. If anyone ever harmed him. I would end them. And yet my father. my flesh and blood, thought nothing of harming me, keeping me in fear of him. What does blood matter?”

She thought of her own family. She loved them. And she believed they loved her. But it wasn’t unconditional. She’d tested the bonds of it, and found they could be broken, and while they had been fixable, they had not healed back the same as they’d been before. He was right. Blood meant nothing.