Susan Mallery - The Marcelli Princess

“That is unacceptable. The heir to Calandria must be raised here. He must understand his duties.”

Rafael knew all about those duties. He’d been raised with them as ever-present ghosts.

“They are a powerful family with close ties to the president. But do not concern yourself. I have a plan.”

“Which is?”

“I will marry Mia.”

Brenna Marcelli Giovanni checked the coffee table. “Cookies, chocolate, wine, glasses. I think that’s everything.”

Mia had been patient while her sisters met Rafael. Then the four of them drove over to Brenna’s house for an afternoon of girl talk and wine.

“Well?” she demanded. “What do you think?”

“We need more wine,” Brenna said. “Definitely another bottle.”

Mia threw herself on the sofa and covered her face with a pillow. “Somebody kill me now.”

“Don’t say that,” Katie told her as she settled next to her and put an arm around her. “Why would you want to be dead just when things are getting interesting?”

“She has a point,” Francesca said. “Besides, death really isn’t your style. Maybe you should start streaking your hair again. That would be a statement.”

“A tacky one,” Brenna said, returning with another bottle of Four Sisters pinot noir. “Everyone have what they need?”

There were murmurs of assent. Brenna sank into a club chair and motioned for Francesca to open the first bottle.

Francesca did the honors, poured them each a glass and passed them around. When everyone had appreciated the aroma, the color, and the subtle blend to Brenna’s satisfaction, Francesca took her seat, then turned to Mia.

“So, you slept with a prince. That’s new.”

Mia threw the pillow at her. “Not helpful. Aren’t you the one with the degree in psychology? Shouldn’t you be making the situation better?”

“That seems like a natural assumption, but in this case, not so much.”

Brenna and her twin grinned at each other. Katie tugged on Mia’s hair. “Don’t let them get to you. They’re just having a little fun. You have to admit, this isn’t normal, even for you. You haven’t been on a date since you found out you were pregnant with Danny. You’d told us his father had died. Suddenly he’s back and he’s a prince. I think a little humor is in order.”

“I know, it’s just that I don’t know what I’m thinking or supposed to think. Or feel, or any of that. He was dead. I saw him die. Only none of it was real and now he’s here and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” Mia looked at Katie. “What did you think of him?”

“He was pleasant. Not pretentious.”

“Good-looking,” Brenna added, “which is always a plus. I mean if you have to look at them every day, why not get one who’s pretty?”

“That is shallow, even for you,” Francesca told her. “He said all the right things, Mia. What we have to figure out is if he means them.”

Katie looked at Mia. “How are you handling this, aside from the death wish?”

“I don’t know. It’s been two days and I’m in confusion mode. The whole situation doesn’t seem possible, but he’s here and it’s happening. He’s Danny’s father. Whatever else happens, I have to deal with that.”

“Yes, there is the whole ‘sperm meets egg’ that changes things forever,” Brenna said. “Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell us how you met him. You were pretty vague when you got back from that assignment.”

Mia knew her sister was being kind. She hadn’t been vague, she’d been completely devastated. Because she’d been in the field as a covert operative-a reality she still had trouble grasping-she hadn’t been able to tell her family anything. In theory, that truth hadn’t changed. Except according to Rafael, nothing had been as it seemed.

“My first assignment was in Calandria,” Mia said, figuring that was as good a place as any to start.

“Was it a dark and stormy night?” Brenna asked.

Mia grinned. “It was raining.”

“You should always pay attention to atmosphere,” her sister told her.

“I will now,” Mia said, then wondered what it meant that it had been sunny the morning Rafael had shown up. Of course this was California. Where she lived, sunny was the norm.

“My job was to infiltrate a group of thieves who were taking newly discovered artifacts out of the country. I was supposed to play a bored, rich, ditzy American looking for trouble.”

“Were you scared?” Katie asked.

“I don’t think I knew enough to be scared,” she admitted. “I thought it was a pretty easy assignment. I wasn’t supposed to stop anyone, just get on the inside and then report back with what I knew. I flew into Calandria with the name of a contact. He was going to introduce me to a few key people in Diego’s ring and then I was to take it from there.”

“Diego’s the bad guy, right?” Francesca asked. “Or the bad guy in disguise?”

“Right. The real Diego had been working this job for almost a year. He’s the one who found the treasures and then got the divers to start bringing them to the surface. He had a reputation for being ruthless and dangerous.”

“Your kind of guy?” Katie asked gently.

“I figured I was done with bad boys,” Mia told her honestly. “After the disaster with Ian, I’d pretty much sworn off relationships period.”

No one said anything, which Mia appreciated. She’d had six years to deal with the guilt of inadvertently bringing a domestic terrorist in close contact with the daughter of the president of the United States. She’d told herself there was no way she could guess that boring Ian, who had gone to grad school with her at Georgetown, was also secretly working to overthrow the government. Even the Secret Service had vetted him and come up with nothing. But she kept thinking she should have known her summer boyfriend was not a nice man.

“I spent a couple of days learning my way around town and sort of checking out Diego’s people. He was too well known to come into town, so I didn’t meet him at first. I did make contact with a couple of the women. As planned, a local policeman recognized one of them and began to arrest her. I started a fire in a trash can, which distracted him, and ran off with the women.”

Brenna’s eyes widened. “You were really a spy.”

“Not a very good one. I lasted all of one assignment and fell in love with the bad guy. No one offered me a promotion.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Katie said. “You weren’t ready for what they asked you to do.”

Mia agreed with that assessment. She should have been given a desk job for a while or at least a few low-level courier assignments. Instead, she’d been thrown into the middle of a gang of thieves, and their leader had mesmerized her from the start.

“They took me back to their hideout,” Mia said. “Apparently that was considered a bad idea, because there was a lot of screaming. They discussed killing me as a way to keep me silent, which terrified me.”

Her sisters stared at her. “They almost killed you? You never said anything.”

“I wasn’t supposed to. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this now. But before anyone could shoot me or stab me, Diego came in and told them to let me go.”

She still remembered everything about that moment. They’d been speaking in Italian, assuming she wouldn’t understand them. Of course she had. Italian, Spanish, French. To her they were practically the same language.

Diego had asked how Mia had met the others, and when he heard about the fire, he crossed to her.

“Why did you help them?” he asked.

His voice had given her goose bumps. Her fear had faded in the heat generated by his nearness. To this day she couldn’t say why she’d fallen for him in that second, but she had. She was sure there was some chemical explanation involving pheromones and the position of the moon or something, but it had happened. Hard, hot need had swept through her until all she could think about was giving herself to him. She would have been anything to him-lover, slave, sycophant. Anything, as long as he let her exist within the sphere of his world.

“They were nice to me,” she’d said instead, proud that she’d been able to form words at all. “I’m loyal to my friends.”

“What do you want with us?” he’d asked.

“Nothing. I don’t even know who you are.”

She’d lied, of course. She knew all about him from her briefing reports. Even more important, in that moment, staring into his dark eyes and willing him to take her right there, she understood the man.

He was darkness and she should be afraid of him, but she couldn’t ignore the power of her need. If necessary, she would be in the darkness with him.

“I am Diego,” he said, then watched sharply as if waiting for a reaction.

“Mia,” she said with a shrug. “I’d offer to shake hands, but I’m kind of tied up.”

He glanced at the handcuffs and smiled. “Do you travel alone?”

“I’m pretty independent. But don’t get too comfy with the idea. If I don’t check in with my dad every couple of days, he goes completely insane. We’re talking about notifying four-star generals. Did I mention my father went to West Point?”

Diego had smiled then. “Release her,” he told the others, speaking Italian. “She amuses me. She may stay. But make sure she doesn’t go out by herself. And monitor her phone calls.”

“I understood him, of course,” Mia said to her sisters. “I thought he was the bad guy. I thought he was the one I was supposed to watch.”

“Isn’t the fact that he wasn’t a good thing?” Katie asked. “Doesn’t that make you feel better?”

“It should,” Mia admitted. “It’s just…” She drew in a breath. “I agonized over what was happening. I knew I was falling for him and that it would affect my judgment. I got in touch with my contact and begged him to get me out of there. I said I was at risk of compromising the assignment. But they left me in play. Every day he was there and every day I tried to resist. One day I couldn’t.”

“Okay, that’s the part I want to hear about,” Brenna said with a sigh. “In detail. Speak slowly.”

Mia grinned. “It was another dark and stormy night. I remember sitting outside on a porch. Nearly everyone had gone into town. It was late and there were so many shadows. Suddenly, he was there.”

He hadn’t said anything-he hadn’t had to. They’d looked at each other and then they were kissing and touching. He’d taken her without saying a word.

“The next morning I wondered if I’d dreamed the whole thing, but when I went to breakfast, he had me sit next to him. We were together from then on.”

There were so many memories. So many times when she’d tried to walk away.

“I didn’t want to do the wrong thing,” she admitted. “If you knew how I tried to stay strong, to remember why I was there. I knew I was breaking every rule, I knew I was going to get fired. I told myself it wasn’t so bad because no one’s life was on the line. But I was wrong.”

Two weeks after she and Diego became lovers, a rival gang attacked.

“I knew about it in advance from my handler. I was supposed to use the confusion to bring Diego in. If he resisted, I was supposed to shoot him. I wanted to warn him. For two days I nearly told him the truth.” She laughed harshly. “For all I know, he arranged the whole damn thing.”

“You think it was part of the plan to get him out of there?” Francesca asked.

“Maybe. I’m not sure. I do know that when the moment came, when I tried to take him with me, he wouldn’t go. When I pulled a gun on him, he told me I wouldn’t be able to shoot him. He was right.”

“Did you try?” Katie asked.

“I knew it was the right thing to do, but I couldn’t pull the trigger.”

Mia had agonized over that. During her debriefing, she’d been grilled again and again about why she hadn’t shot him when she’d had the chance. Now, knowing who he really was, she wondered if he’d replaced her bullets with blanks. It sure wouldn’t surprise her.

“The fighting got closer,” she continued, remembering the noise of that night. The sharp sound of gunfire, the cries of those who had been injured, then the roar of her helicopter.

“I didn’t want to leave him, but I had to get out. I knew that. I begged him to come with me.”

He’d smiled at her then, had kissed her hard and told her to remember him. Because he’d known she was about to “see” him die?

“He literally tossed me onto the helicopter,” she said. “I don’t think I would have gone otherwise. As we lifted up, two men rushed him. I screamed, but it was too late. They fired and he fell and there was so much blood.”

She would remember that for the rest of her life. The sound of the helicopter, her own screams, and the bright light that showed the rapidly widening pool of blood as Diego died.