48. DANTE

This can’t be happening. It can’t.

Maria’s glare is unmistakable as she clicks off the screen in her office.

“I’m trying very hard not to jump to conclusions,” she says, eyebrow arched. “So please tell me what’s going on here.”

“Has Amanda seen this?” I ask, panic creeping into my guts.

“Yes,” she says. “You could have watched it together, but no one could get in touch with you.”

God damn it. I turned my phone off while I was in the gym – when I came out, there were a dozen urgent messages from Maria and Carlo.

“She must be beside herself,” I say. “I have to talk to her.”

Maria holds up a hand to stop me.

“Talk to me first,” she says. “Tell me what’s happening in those photos.”

“I don’t know!” I shout. “We were drinking, I went to bed, and I woke up with a terrible hangover that lasted for days.”

Her face slumps. “So it could be real,” she says. “You were too drunk to remember.”

Bile rises in my throat at the accusation.

“You know me, Maria,” I say. “I wouldn’t do something like this, that would hurt Amanda. I’m not like that.”

“Your playboy image may have been exaggerated by Renaldo’s crew, but it’s still based in reality. Are you telling me that you’ve never woken up with a woman in your bed before? One that ended up there in the course of a night of drinking?”

My stomach sinks. I can’t honestly say that. I’ve done my share of partying, slept with more than my share of women. Giselle Ranette was one of many, many mistakes I’ve made in my life.

But none since Amanda walked into my life. Those eyes caught me like a fishing hook the moment we met, and they’ve held me fast ever since.

“I’m not going to justify my past to you, Maria,” I say, more angrily than I intended. “I don’t know what’s going on in these photos, but whatever it is, I know I wasn’t consciously aware of it.”

She rolls her eyes. “That will go over well with Lorenzo Ricci, I’m sure. ‘I wasn’t aware.’ How many sleazy politicians have we heard that from over the decades?”

“Look,” I snap. “I recognize the woman from earlier in the party. I said something… unflattering to her and a friend of hers at the party. Maybe this is some kind of revenge for her. With the hangover I suffered, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d put a date rape drug in my drink.”

“Destroying a prince over an insult?” she says. “Really, Dante?”

“I don’t know!” I bark, striding to the door. “All I do know is I need to talk to Amanda.”

“I don’t think she’s in the mood,” Maria says. “As you can probably imagine.”

I storm out of her office and stalk towards the quarters I share with Amanda. She has to listen to me! We can’t have made it this far to have it fall apart now over something so stupid! I need her to listen.

My stomach is roiling with acid. I don’t know if I’ve ever been this upset as an adult, outside of learning of the deaths of Adriana and Albert, and discovering I was now the twins’ guardian. My life has been defined by tragedy, and the moment I find a glimmer of hope for happiness, this comes out of nowhere to blindside me.

I reach our quarters and gingerly open the door. Amanda is sitting on the sofa, hands folded in her lap, staring at the wall.

“Amanda?” I say softly. “May I come in?”

“It’s your palace,” she shrugs, not looking at me. “You can do what you want.”

I close the door behind me. “It’s our palace,” I say. “Yours and mine.”

“I don’t remember reading anything about that in the contract. It specifically said five million dollars for a year of marriage.”

The muscles in my neck and shoulders are stiff with tension as I sit next to her. This is a nightmare.

“It’s a mistake,” I say. “I don’t know what happened with that woman, but whatever it was, I wasn’t conscious when it was going on.”

That didn’t sound at all the way I wanted it to.

“You don’t owe me an explanation,” she says quietly. “All you owed me was enough money to help save my family ranch from foreclosure. You’ve fulfilled that part of the bargain, I’m going to fulfill mine.”

I reach out to take her hand, but she pulls away. She still hasn’t looked me in the eye.

“The night those photos were taken,” she says. “That was the same night you told my father that the ‘bride price’ was twenty-five million, not five million.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do that?”

I frown. “Because I didn’t believe five million dollars was enough to compensate you for what you would have to go through as my wife.”

“I never thought I’d have to go through something like this,” she says. It hits me like an arrow in the chest.

“Amanda – ”

“Tell me one thing,” she says. “Did you do it to make sure I wouldn’t talk? Is that why you upped the money? Because you knew what you’d be doing later in the evening?”

I reach out and take her by the shoulders, turning her to face me.

“Absolutely not,” I say gravely. “I did it for you. And because your father deserved it. He’s the most honorable man I know.”

“I doubt he feels the same way about you today. The story will be all over the morning news in Montana by now.”

Jesus, I never even thought of that. And the twins! This mess is snowballing out of control.

“Amanda, I swear to you: those photos are staged. Someone is trying to hurt me.”

“Who?” she asks. “What motive would they have?”

“The councils want me out! For all I know, Huber planted that woman at the party specifically to blackmail me.”

She sighs and looks down at her hands for a long time. The thought that anything I’ve done has made her feel this way makes my soul crack. I have to make it right. If I don’t, I fear I may go insane.

“I wasn’t there, and you can’t prove anything about that night, one way or the other,” she says. “My father raised me to take people at their word. I won’t ask you any more about it.”

That’s a far cry from saying she believes me and that she’ll stand beside me through this. But she’s right – I don’t have any evidence about anything that night. I have to make her understand that I’d never deliberately do anything to hurt her.

She raises those ghostly blue eyes to mine, and the sadness I see in them almost destroys me.

“What are you going to tell the children?” she asks.

“The truth: that someone is trying to blackmail me.”

“Do you think they’ll understand that?”

“I hope so. I need to talk to your father, too. He was there, I’m sure he’ll believe me.”

She bites her lip. “That’ll be cold comfort when he has to explain it to his buddies at the cattle auction.”

“That’s not up to him,” I say. “It’s up to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m going on Morova Morning tomorrow to talk directly to Lorenzo Ricci This is a deliberate attack against us, and I’m not going to take it lying down.”