Page 54 of Undeniably Corrupt (Boston’s Irresistible Billionaires #7)

SEBASTIAN

I t happened on a cloudless summer day like any other in Messalina.

It was Sunday. Nothing strange about it.

Sunday is my favorite day of the week since it is the one day I try to force myself not to work—if I can avoid it.

Being king doesn’t always allow for such luxuries, but on this particular Sunday, it did.

The children and I were in the garden, Phaedra and Sabrina chasing me with a kite they couldn’t get to launch.

Their blonde, braided pigtails bounced against their backs, their smiles giddy and infectious.

Zayer was sleeping in the nanny’s arms since anytime she attempted to put him down, he’d immediately wake up fussing.

He missed his mother and her breast and wasn’t afraid to let us all know it.

But that’s why we were out in the garden. Waiting on Nora, my wife, my queen.

We were in our summer residence. A palace built into a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The helicopter was due to land any moment on the other side of the grounds. The girls, anxious to see her, decided they wanted to be outside to watch her land and greet her.

Nora had been gone from us for a little over a week, back home in France with her mother, who was no longer well enough to travel even the short distance from her home to our palace here.

I was set to take the children out to see them there, but Nora decided at the last minute to return on the helicopter, and then we would all fly to France together so the children could visit with their grandmother.

The whomp, whomp, whomp of the helicopter’s rotors tickled the edges of our ears, and the girls immediately stopped running, their faces casting up to the heavens, searching until they found the black dot in the distance, cheering as it grew larger in the sky.

I knew it before it happened.

Having once flown helicopters myself, I could see something wasn’t right.

The nose was listing down and to the right.

Not much. But enough to tug a frown to my lips and have my hand rise to my forehead to block the sun so I could scrutinize it better.

It was another second. Maybe two. Hardly enough time for me to make a noise and definitely not enough time to demand the girls go inside.

They saw it all.

It unfolded like watching a horror film.

One where you know what’s about to happen, but you’re frozen in a fear so consuming you can hardly breathe or blink or gasp or scream.

I tried to swallow, but it was impossible.

Burnt cotton down my throat, I had no voice.

Even so, I did my best to yell, commanding the girls to drop to the ground and cover their eyes.

A last-second warning, a half-second before the helicopter started to fall.

Neither moved but I reacted on instinct.

I grabbed the girls, tackled them to the ground, and covered their bodies with my own. The nanny ran inside, holding a crying Zayer to her chest. The sound of the explosion was deafening. The heat of the fireball excruciating as the flames licked my skin from afar.

I watched. I had to.

A raging ball of orange flames and black smoke, it plummeted to the earth in a freefall only to slam into the ground, the impact rumbling through our bones, and it exploded again, this time with pieces of helicopter shooting in every direction.

There was nothing to do but watch. Hold my girls and keep them safe while their mother died before their eyes in the most gruesome of ways.

I knew none of us would ever be safe again.

That the trajectory of our lives was irrevocably altered.

And it filled my heart with a panic I have not been able to shake since.

Morbidly, I knew what losing Nora in that oh-so-graphic and blatant way represented. I was all too aware of what was headed our way, and I could not, would not , allow that to be the fate of my children. I didn’t care how I’d do it, but I would protect them.

I’ll admit, years ago when I was just a teenager, I would have been the first person to tell you the supposed curse on the throne of Messalina was bullshit.

I mean, who the fuck believes in curses in this day and age?

It’s ridiculous. The fabricated absurdity of fairy tales. Sure, I knew the stories by heart. The history of my ancestors. How they perished before their time in abnormal ways. How they were plagued by strange diseases and heartbreaking tragedy.

It was my daily education. The lessons I chose to dismissively roll my eyes at.

After all, I was to be king.

Who was anyone else, past or present, to tell me what was headed my way?

I wrongly, perhaps arrogantly, assumed death, tragedy, and illness happen to everyone. That statistically, nothing about our throne or kingdom put us more at risk than anyone else by comparison.

I was determined to believe that.

Even after someone kidnapped my little sister Desta when she was just a baby and our father was murdered in the skirmish, making me king far earlier than I should have been.

Even when my baby sister Brea was first diagnosed with her condition and our mother, wrought with dread and grief, whisked her last remaining princess away, hiding her from the world.

Even then I did not believe in the curse so many others—including my mother—did.

It wasn’t until I watched Nora’s helicopter fall from the heavens and explode before my eyes that I finally succumbed to the notion that my family was, in fact, cursed.

This meant my children, the heirs to the throne, would perish by the same hand unless I did something about it.

Only there was no witch to bargain with.

No sorcerer who placed this curse to kill.

It was insidious. A monster biding its time, waiting to claim your soul just when you begin to let your guard down and start to think maybe all this nonsense is in your head.

Then it swoops in, an angel of death set on ultimate destruction and ruination as it strikes.

Like it did with Nora.

A woman who wasn’t even of our bloodline. She was my queen. Born to French nobility, she was not from Messalina. Not that it mattered in her end. Marrying me sealed her fate.

The story of my country goes like this…

We were named for the Roman empress Messalina.

A woman married to the Roman emperor Claudius, she was powerful and influential.

A woman who loved our particular patch of land during the height of the Roman Empire.

The emperor gifted her this land, creating a new country and kingdom just for her, bearing her name.

Then it was discovered she had conspired against him, and she was subsequently executed for her crime. Claudius, embarrassed of how he had loved a woman who had betrayed him, damned our royal blood—blood that was said to stem from her and her adultery—setting forth a curse consecrated by the Gods.

Centuries later, our small but prestigious country flanking the borders of France, Italy, and Switzerland, dragging from the balmy Mediterranean all the way up to the Alps, is rich in agriculture, history, tourism, and various exports. We prosper despite our heritage and namesake.

All but the royal family.

Confession time?

I wasn’t in love with my wife. I respected and cared for her, which is more than most can ask for in my situation.

She was a good woman, an excellent mother, a kind queen, and a trusted friend.

She understood our marriage and relationship, though I was aware she had wished there had been more between us.

Her death was devastating.

To our children. To our people.

It was fear that held me more than losing her.

As wrong as that is. For the first time since she became my wife, I was grateful I wasn’t in love with her.

I’d seen firsthand what love was capable of when I was just a young boy.

Had felt its strife and burden. Had believed it evil when Desta was taken from us, and our father was killed.

I knew how love had decimated my mother from the inside out. She was never the same.

Love was a vulnerability.

One I swore I would never allow to touch the fortress of my body or penetrate the kingdom of my heart. For a king, there was nothing worse.

So, I did not love my queen.

Maybe that was her curse. Maybe that’s what killed her. My lack of love.

Love.

That’s where the curse had stemmed from in the first place. A lovesick, heartbroken emperor.

Maybe love was the key.

But to what? Ruination or salvation? Both?

That I didn’t know. I love my children, but I did not love my queen. My mother loved her children and her husband but was not loved by him in return. So where did that leave me, and where did that leave my children?

I’d give up my life and my world for them. Which is exactly what I did to try to change their fate.

After Nora’s death, I took our three children to our palace in the north sector of the country. Right at the point where the Alps begin to rise up and the land to the south and east is vast and empty, save for a few small towns here and there. It’s quiet and protected.

That’s where we’ve been since.

Three years, and I’ve kept us shut away. Hidden. Only going out sporadically, and rarely with my children. I have no choice but to keep us here. Safe. Away from all who could potentially pose a threat. And as the years have gone by, I’ve grown bitter and resentful. Cold.

A Beast King.

A recluse.

Angry and brutal and volatile.

My country believes I’m still grieving the loss of my wife, and in so many ways, I am.

Her death is how I find myself here, stuck in this meeting. The one where my housekeeper, Emily, her husband, Javier, who is my head driver and chief of security, and my aunt, my mother’s sister, Althea, who acts as my social secretary and assistant, are all telling me one thing.

“You need a new nanny.”