“SeñorReyes,” I continued, barely acknowledging him, “There is absolutelynothingI wouldn’t do for Isla, and if that means—”
“You’ve made your point, Malachi. Allow me to continue with mine.”
I attempted to relax into a neutral posture despite rage electrifying every last one of my nerves. “My apologies, sir.”
He resumed pacing. “I appreciate your zeal. It gives me confidence in your commitment to her. However, you’re nineteen. Part of your zeal is merely youth and testosterone. So, you need to be aware of this now, so that when you are old enough to request her hand, you will understand this is what I will expect of you.” He crossed the room, stopping next to the loveseat and looming over me. “You will play a significant role in your country’s government when you are a man. Are you prepared to set all of that aside to protect her if necessary? Are you prepared to walk away from your duty to your country if that’s what it takes to shield her from them? Are you prepared forestos matonesto come afteryouwhen they find out she’s under your care? Because they will.”
Without hesitation or thought, I stared up at him and answered, “Yes.”
He leaned down toward me, bringing his face to only inches from mine. “Are you sure?”
I looked back at him, unflinching. “Yes.”
One of his bushy, salt-and-pepper eyebrows lifted. “It could cost you your title or even your life, Malachi.”
I set my jaw. “I couldn’t care less about my title. And Isla is the only thing that has ever made my life worth living.”
Ernesto lingered next to my face for several beats before standing up straight and stalking across the room toward his desk. Opening a drawer, he lifted a wooden box and carried it back to the large armchair, where he sat and set the box on the coffee table in front of me.
Leaning back, he gestured with one finger at me. “Go ahead.”
I glanced at him before lifting the lid. Inside was a chrome pistol, identical to the one he’d been polishing, complete with the same elaborate, jeweled grip.
My gut was suddenly heavy with the severity of the entire meeting, but at the same time, my palm was itching to hold the weapon. I cut my eyes back up to him in a look of requesting permission.
He nodded. “Pick it up.”
So, I did.
It was cold, heavy, and solid. I’d handled plenty of firearms while participating in various hunts according to the traditions of Corwick. I would also be required to do a compulsory stint in Corwick’s small Royal Navy, so firearms were never a taboo or forbidden thing in my life. But this one was different. This one felt like holding not only the weight of the entire world, but also the entirety of my love and loyalty to Isla in the palm of my hand.
“It is, of course, a ceremonial item,” Ernesto explained. “I know that your family has security measures in spades.However, understand that if it comes down to it, I expect you to use that without hesitation.”
I clasped my fingers around the grip and turned the pistol over in my hand before looking back up at him. “You have my word.”
He nodded again. “See to it that I always do.”
MALACHI
Present
IT’S NOW PUSHING ELEVEN p.m., and I’ve polished off nearly half the decanter of scotch, and I feel likeshit.Notshitin a way that has a damn thing to do with drunkenness, rather more like the feeling of shit that results from being a glutton for punishment.
I spent the majority of the evening sipping the scotch from the comfort of the balcony in my room, really fucking irritated that my wing of the palace doesn’t have the spectacular view of the sunset over the ocean.Isla’sdoes. Because I gave her the nicer wing. Because I’mnota monster and wanted her to have the better view from the better balcony. So instead of watching the sunset while slowly getting drunk, I stared at the steadily darkening maze of rose bushes and the staff completing their final tasks of the day and got drunk anyway.
And now that everything has been black for hours, I finally push myself off the cushy chaise lounge and carry my empty glass back inside. I pause long enough to refill it one more time, and then meander aimlessly out of the room. Although, after a moment, it’s not entirely aimless, as my uninhibited brain has decided I’m going to the vault in my study.
Once there, I scan my gaze across the many leather boxes of my allocation of the crown jewels, and then begin randomly opening them if for no other reason than boredom.
Well… boredomandto keep me from going for the one wooden box in here that’snotjewelry, and that I haven’t opened in about ten years.
It’s only when I open the box encasing the ruby-and-diamond-encrusted, lasso-style wrap necklace that the temptation to open that wooden box becomes more than I can resist. The long rope of alternating red and white crystalline jewels and two fat, pear-shaped rubies dangling from the ends is an original piece that I had commissioned for Isla on my eighteenth birthday. As a legal adult, I obtained my title, my inheritance, my allocation of property, and all the jewelry in this vault, and the first thing I did was have this necklace made for her. My plan all along had been to propose to her on the day she graduated from college, and the necklace was to be her graduation gift. Given that marrying me meant largely conforming to a life that neither of us had much control over, I wanted to give her something that captured the unique essence of who she was and her lively personality. She would’ve loved it. But she betrayed me before I ever had a chance to give it to her.
With alcohol potent in my bloodstream, my give-a-fucks about a lot of things seem to be dissolving at a rapid rate, and I pull the ruby-and-diamond rope necklace out of its box and drape it over my neck as I go straight for the wooden box.
Lifting the lid exactly how I did eleven years ago when Ernesto presented it to me, I’m suddenly catapulted back in time to that moment when I was gripped with not only an intoxicating sense of purpose, but also the feeling blue balls that desperately needed to be dealt with.
Isla and I have been married for a week now. That’s seven days’ worth of hard-ons I can’t relieve. Seven days’ worth of seeing the woman who had possessed my very soul and flippantly tossed it into a proverbial woodchipper. Seven days’ worth of being tortured by lust driven by hate so intense that it’s rivaled only by the intensity of the love we once shared.
