Leandro fixed him with a blank stare. Durante knew his lightning-swift mind was calculating all possible outcomes of every comment he could make.
Leandro finally exhaled. “I admit, this is totally unexpected. I can imagine how shocked you feel.”
“Can you, Leandro?” Tendrils of fury began to rise among the ashes of deadness. “Can you imagine what it feels like to surrender your heart only to find out you’ve fallen for your enemy?”
Leandro’s jaw hardened. “That is shock talking, Durante. Gabrielle has nothing to do with your parents’ affair.”
And the fury ignited. “She lied. She pretended she didn’t know my father—Dio, she blinded me so completely I never suspected a thing. And all the time she’s been lying…about everything.”
“Don’t start jumping to conclusions,” Leandro said, like a father chastising sense into an overemotional son. “There could be a perfectly good reason why she couldn’t reveal their connection.”
“There is a perfectly good reason. Gabrielle’s reputation includes a warning not to let her within a mile of you. She knew I would never have met with her had I known. She played me so seamlessly, she had me groveling for believing the rumors about her instead. Dio! The hurt she poured out, the act I bought to the last tremulous treacherous gasp. I trusted her so much I didn’t even think of investigating her. And she’s been deceiving me all along. She’s—”
“Durante, stop.” Leandro’s growl was like a pressure bandage slammed on the hemorrhage of his rage and agony. “I once jumped to conclusions, listened to my fears and prejudices about Phoebe, and I ended up wasting eight years of our lives. Eight endless, miserable years of our living apart and in emotional exile. Don’t make the same mistake. The price is incalculable.”
And the torrent of pain gushed again. “Did Phoebe turn out to be the daughter of the woman your mother died of a broken mind and heart over? Did she keep lying to you until she had you depending on her for your every breath so that you wouldn’t be able to break free once you learned the truth? Is she a cold-blooded, manipulative cheat?”
Leandro’s gaze hardened to flint around the core of burning empathy. “All I can say is that this is circumstantial evidence, and I’ve learned the hardest way possible how misleading that can be. But as impossible as it may be for you to think right now, there are more important things at stake than your heart. Castaldini is in danger. The financial dangers are the least of our problems and the easiest to deal with. Political and ethnic conflicts are brewing, and as regent I don’t have the influence of a king. Everyone believes they can wait for my proxy to be over—they don’t feel the necessity to bow to my power. Castaldini needs a king.”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“It has everything to do with it. The king has forbidden anyone to reveal to you his intention to approach you with his demand before he judged the time right to do so himself, but I believe none of us can afford to wait anymore. I can see that your personal situation is about to blow to kingdom come, and you cannot let that interfere with your decision.”
“What decision? What the devil are you talking about?”
Leandro looked as if he were about to stab him, hating to do it but knowing there was no escape. “After I declined to become crown prince, the king had the Council make an exigency amendment to the laws of succession. By this new amendment, he can now make you his crown prince. If you agree.” Leandro took him by the shoulders, shook him. “As you should, Durante. As you must.”
And it all made sense. Sick, macabre sense.
His father had set out to make him agree.
He’d known nothing would bring Durante back—nothing except an irresistible woman armed with thorough knowledge of him so she could project the image of his soulmate.
And she’d manipulated him to the point where they would achieve their objectives. At his expense. His father would get back the son who’d rejected him, would pass the crown to his line through Durante, while Gabrielle, the king’s partner in crime, the daughter of the woman he’d loved above all else, would be that son’s worshipped wife and queen, as his father had failed to make her mother.
His father was going to make his demand today. He knew it. And if he’d still been blind and fathoms-deep in love and trust, he would have agreed to anything to keep peace and harmony.
He exploded to his feet, rage and agony boiling his blood.
Leandro shot up, caught him. “Don’t do anything in this state, or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
“What life?” Durante roared as he pushed his cousin away with all the violence tearing apart his insides before staggering away, a mortally wounded beast bent on slashing apart the two people who’d killed him before he surrendered to oblivion.
Gabrielle stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, whimpered as she brought the ice cube again to her swollen eyelids, trying to ameliorate the swelling.
She’d been back in her quarters for an hour now. She’d run there to get a hold of herself, but she’d failed miserably.
Shock and misery still wracked her. It felt as if acid were gushing through the gaping cracks of her shattered world.
How could they? Her mother, and King Benedetto? All these years, lying to her, to everyone?
Now everything made sense. Why her mother had always had that look of apology, why she’d sent her to a boarding school in Napoli when she was old enough to suspect what was going on.
Betrayal ate at her. But it was nothing compared to the dread that tore at the tethers of her mind. If she felt this way, what would Durante feel when he found out?
The king had said he should never find out. But this couldn’t be hidden. Not anymore. And she had to be the one to tell Durante the terrible truth.
She had to do it now. Before their meeting with the king. Come what may. Even if it was something she might not survive.
The icy feeling had reduced the telltale signs of weeping, but she still looked like she had on the day she’d lost her mother. She felt as if she had lost her all over again. She might lose her life now. She would, if she lost Durante.
No. No, she wouldn’t. Durante believed in her now. He’d know she had nothing to do with any of it. He trusted her.
She staggered out of her suite…and was almost knocked off her feet by the wall that materialized in her doorway.
Durante! God…here…no, she needed a few more minutes…