Crowned for His Christmas Baby by Maisey Yates

Author:Maisey Yates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-09-13T17:53:41+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

WHEN HE HAD awakened to find that Eloise was gone, it had come as a shock to him. A shock that had faded with the passage of these many months, especially as the media storm that he had brought down upon his father, and on Arista, had had some unexpected results.

His father had abdicated. And fled before legal proceedings could be taken up against him. Whether or not he had taken Cressida St. George along with him was a mystery, but she had vanished as well.

Leaving Vincenzo on the cusp of being crowned King. His coronation would coincide with the new year. Though it was merely a formality, as he was even now acting the part of ruler.

It gave him little time to ponder Eloise. But he did. In those quiet moments when there was nothing but the breeze and he thought of roses.

It was an impossibility, anyway. The two of them. An impossibility that they should ever have anything more than that single night.

It was perfect, poetic in many ways. As if they had somehow consummated the vengeance itself.

And yet he dreamed of her.

And he wanted no other woman. Though he told himself there was no time for women anyway.

He was rearranging a country.

He was not going to plunge them straight into democracy, but rather he was establishing oversight. Parliament. He would not abolish the monarchy overnight, for there was no practicality there.

The people were used to being ruled with an iron fist, and when it came to restrictions, Vincenzo was opening the floodgates.

There were many older citizens, however, who wondered at the security if they did not have a king.

And Vincenzo was happy to see that everything ran the way that he thought it should, and that everyone felt secure.

He was thankful, also, for his friends from Oxford, who had been his lifeline through all of this.

Rafael, bastard though he was, in every sense of the word, had been the acting Regent of his nation for years, waiting for his younger brother, the true heir, to come into majority.

Jag was well established in his own country, and Zeus was god of all he surveyed. Though he was not the ruler of his country as yet, he certainly behaved as though he ran the world.

It was not unusual for them to clear their schedules and fly to the nearest major city to meet up for a drink or two. Even less unusual for them to make video calls to one another. He felt privileged to be surrounded by them as advisors. Though he often thought it funny, given the hell they had raised in their youths. Age, he thought, came for everyone.

So it was not entirely unexpected when his computer chimed, and he answered, that the first face that popped up was Rafael. Followed by Zeus and then Jag.

“It’s late here,” Jag said.

“Apologies,” Rafael said, but he did not sound at all sorry.

He could see that Rafael was in his study, a fire roaring behind him. It was cold in his mountainous country near Spain, as it was in Arista.

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