“Clearly not well enough,” I said coldly.“If you hadn’t learn anything from the first time you sent someone to take me.”
His gaze sharpened slightly, but the smile stayed.He stepped closer.
I didn’t move.Didn’t give him an inch.
“I’ve gone to great lengths to get to you,” he said quietly, “and now here you are.You’d better adjust to the idea of having me in your life.”
I laughed.Short.Bitter.Disbelieving.
“You’ve lost your fucking mind.”
“Not at all.”
“You think kidnapping me is going to make me fall into your arms?”I scoffed.“You’re delusional.”
His eyes held mine, steady and certain.If nothing, he was very sure of himself.
“I think,” he said, “that given enough time… you’ll see things differently.”
“Not a chance.”
His smile deepened slightly.
“I’ll do whatever it takes,” he said.“I’ll make you fall in love with me.”
A chill slid down my spine.The words hung there, sounding heavy and wrong.
My stomach twisted, my hand instinctively pressing against it again, shielding, protecting.
Over my dead body.
I met his gaze, something cold settling into place behind my ribs.
“Well, then, I hope you’re ready to die, Machado.Because there’s only one way this ends.”
28
Flashback - Archie
By twenty-five, the crown had become a noose everyone else insisted on calling an honour.
I did not want it.
That was the one truth I had spoken consistently enough to wear grooves into the walls of that house.I did not want the title, the ceremony, the deference, the poisoned inheritance I was supposed to acknowledge and be grateful for.Whatever power came with that seat had already soured in my father’s hands.I had no interest in inheriting what was left of it.
It should have gone to Rasputin.Not because he craved it.But because he understood what it demanded without confusing duty for vanity.
He could have ruled well if fate had given him a different father.He knew the people.Knew how to command without theatrics.Knew where fear ended and respect began.Men listened when he spoke because he did not waste words, and because there was something in him they trusted even when they did not understand him.
My father knew that too.
That was part of the problem.
The older I got, the more often Viktor called me to him.He held private dinners and closed-door meetings that excluded Rasputin.He watched me the way some men inspect a weapon before deciding whether to use it or display it.He spoke to me more and more as though my future had already been chosen.As though the crown was not a question but an inevitability waiting for me to stop resisting it.
I resisted harder each time.
One evening, after a dinner so strained the silverware sounded hostile, he made his intentions plain.
