^“You can’t remove me as CEO,” I growl into my cell phone, pacing the terrace at my flat. “It’s written in my contract that I have to choose to step down.”

“We’re not trying to remove you,” Eliza says. I can actually hear her grinning on the other end. Bitch. “We’re asking you to take a leave of absence until the royal family is less of a hot-button topic. We’re getting nonstop calls from the press right now, and every single inquiry is about you, or your father, or some such nonsense.”

“I can’t control what His Royal Highness does,” I sigh. “It isn’t as if I’ve violated my contract.”

“Violated it again, you mean.”

If I could go back in time and change things, sleeping with Eliza would be near the top of my list. I wish I’d seen her for the jealous, hateful, bitter woman that she is… instead of thinking with my cock, as usual.

“How long is this ‘leave of absence’?” I ask, knowing there’s no use fighting with her. She wouldn’t be calling if she hadn’t already whipped the votes in her favor.

“Oh, a few months, a year… who knows, really? It depends on the royals, I should think,” she says.

“I assume that you’ve already lined up an interim CEO?” I ask.

“Why, yes. As a matter of fact, I’ll be filling your shoes. Better hope I’m not too good at it, Rex.”

“Somehow, Eliza, I’m not too worried about that. Try not to fuck any of the other board members if you can help it, eh?” I ask.

Slut shaming her is beneath me, but I’ve let my temper take over. I disconnect the call before she can respond.

I toss my phone onto the table and groan. The hits just keep coming this week.

Normally to blow off steam I would head out to the track and do laps in my personal car, running it as hard as I can until I start to shred the tires.

Today, I can’t do that. It would only complicate matters further.

I wish Kit was here, I think. She wouldn’t be able to fix this, of course, but she could certainly make me feel better.

She’s gone to see to the opening of Auberge House, to make sure all is ready for her mother’s arrival.

Soon, Kit will be gone from me, too. Living at Auberge House, under her mother’s supervision. And with Countess Saville newly single, Kit will have a lot of family obligations and not a lot of time for errant, jobless assholes like me.

This little bubble of calm happiness we’ve found is about to burst, and that makes me even angrier.

As I head into the kitchen, a tabloid lying on the coffee table catches my eye.

Prince Magnum Living the High Life Once Again!!! it says, with a four-year-old photo of me standing shirtless on a yacht.

Yeah, right. I fucking wish. I’d give just about anything to be on a yacht right now, pouring champagne into Kit’s open mouth as she stretches out on the deck under the glinting Aegean sun.

The intercom by the front door buzzes as I’m grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. I frown. No one I know ever comes here, and the doormen keep strangers at bay. Who would be trying to access the elevator to the penthouse??

I stalk over and take a look. There on the screen is a blurry Bram, clutching a fedora in his hands and looking into the camera nervously. I frown and press the receiver button.

“Bram, why didn’t you call?” I ask.

“Uh, last minute stop, Rex,” comes his tinny voice. “I was just… in the neighborhood. Can you send the elevator down for me?”

“Sure, just a second,” I say, shaking my head. Bram’s being a little weird, but he’s like that sometimes.

Specifically, when he’s high. I hope to fuck that’s not the case right now. Bram’s kept his addiction issues under wraps for a while now, but it’s unnerving, never quite knowing what to expect from him.

Am I being a paranoid jerk, or is Bram just too unstable to be a good friend?

When the elevator doors roll open, I groan out loud.

Not only is Bram absolutely loaded, but he’s brought a guest. Kit’s blackmailing ex strolls in like he owns the fucking place. In Charles’s deluded mind, maybe he will. He’s probably planning to move onto me once he’s tapped out Kit’s limited funds.

“What the fuck are you doing with him? Why are you bringing him into my home?” I snap at Bram. “Are you insane? Seriously, Bram, you’ve fucked it this time.”

“Ahh, now, don’t be too hard on Bram. His little junkie brain is just trying to keep up with the rest of the world,” Charles says. “Well, that and he knows that if he didn’t bring me here, I’d release photos of him snorting smack to the press.”

I look to Bram for verification. He’s staring at the floor, too stoned and ashamed to meet my gaze. I guess that’s answer enough, then.

“Fuck, Bram.” I shake my head and turn to Charles. “What do you want? Kit’s already contacted you to tell you that I’m not doing the race. If you push forward with this, the Royal Police and the Queen’s guard will have you stitched up so tight that you’ll regret your whole miserable bloody life.”

“Can we sit, like civilized people?” Charles says, beckoning to the living room. “I think you’ll want to be sitting down when I tell you exactly what I have on your precious girlfriend.”

I raise a brow. Part of me wants to know, so bad, but part of me realizes that revealing her secret is part of Charles’s game.

“I want you to leave,” I say after a second.

“What about your cousin?” Charles asks.

I look at Bram, then shrug. “You’ll have to find some other way to leverage your photos.”

Charles’s expression goes black as a thunderclap.

“I was trying to go easy on you, Alasdair, but it’s clear that I have to tell it to you straight.”

“Get out.” I point to the door.

“Kit was pregnant when she came to the States,” he says.

I’m moving to grab him, to get him out of my fucking house. His words reach me only slowly, and I stop.

“What?” I ask, shaking my head. Like my ears are broken, like I’ve mistaken the ugly words he just spoke.

“Yeah. She’s never admitted who the baby daddy was outright, but I’m almost a hundred percent certain it’s you,” Charles says, a foul grin spreading across his face. “Well, you would have been the father. She miscarried, right on the steps of the student health center. And since you were nowhere to be found, she called on her good buddy Charles.”

Before I know it, I’m gripping him by the lapels of his cheap suit, slamming him up against the wall as hard as I can.

“Liar,” I snarl. “She would’ve told me.”

Charles blinks a couple of times, then his malicious grin reappears.

“Apparently you told her that she was your dirty little secret. Broke her heart, poor naive Katherine. She told me she didn’t want to burden you—”

“Stop. Talking,” I hiss, slamming him into the wall to punctuate each word. “Do you have proof, or is this all just rumors you’re planning to circulate?”

“Medical records,” he grunts. “Two sets, for confirmation. From her doctor, and from the student health center. Both show positive pregnancy test results, and one has a list of prenatal checkups. She got five months along before she lost the baby.”

I release him, feeling winded, like someone’s punched me right in the gut.

A baby? I want to rebel, to beat the shit out of Charles’s lying face, but… it does make a sick kind of sense.

The way she talked to me the last night we were together, how weird she was acting.

The way she disappeared, and the next thing I knew she was already overseas.

The way she never answered a single call, text, email… nothing. No contact.

“Get out of my flat,” I tell Charles and Bram. There’s no heat in my voice now. Everything is turned inward, a swirling vortex of dark questions.

Charles pulls out an orange flyer and thrusts it at me. “Take this. You’re going to need the race times. I’ve already entered you in the second race of the night, against Tamil Boys.”

“I’m not racing.” I press the elevator button and the doors open. “Now go.”

“Do you want the whole world to know that you knocked up your high school sweetheart? I think the press will like it more than your grandparents will,” Charles says.

“I’m three seconds from planting a fist in your fucking face,” I warn.

Bram finally stumbles forward and grabs Charles, dragging him into the elevator.

“Are you really going to let Katherine’s private shame get out there for the whole world to see and comment on? She’ll never recover from that,” Charles says, sticking his hand out to stop the doors from closing on him.

Shit. He’s right.

“Besides, if you don’t do the race, Bram here’s your second. He’s completely inexperienced, and he’ll probably be high as a kite. Do you really want another friend’s death on your conscience?”

I grab the elevator door when he releases it. I pull it open and jump on him, releasing an inhuman snarl. Bram slides away, hiding in the corner, and I proceed to pummel Charles to a fucking pulp.

“Fucking! Cunt! If you ever come NEAR her again, I will fucking KILL you. I want to!” I howl, all my confused rage releasing on him in a punishing torrent.

Thwack. Thump. Thwack. I move from his face to his body, my fists throbbing and aching, my throat raw from the way I’m screaming at the guy.

“Jesus, Rex, enough!” Bram screams in my ear.

I freeze, then straighten to stand. Blood drips from my hands, both mine and Charles’s.

“Don’t come back,” I say to both of them, turning and walking back into the flat.

The doors glide shut behind me, and I step to the intercom. I buzz the front desk.

“Yes, Your Highness?” one of the suited doormen says.

“There’s a problem in the elevator. I need it taken care of. Discreetly,” I say.

“Of course. Think no more of it,” the doorman says.

“Thank you. Oh, and if you see either of those two men in the building again, I want them detained for the Queen’s guard. Neither of them can get near Lady Katherine, do you understand?”

“Of course.”

I release the button and look down at myself. I’m bloody and tattered, my navy dress shirt ripped at the cuff and the elbow. My freak out is going to have to wait for a minute while I clean up evidence of what I just did to Charles.

I know that the doormen will take care of the mess in the elevator. I just have to get myself straightened out. In my current mindset though, it’s easier said than done.

I strip off my shirt and then my jeans, then toss them in the hamper in my walk-in closet. If the RAF did anything for me, it taught me to be neat and precise, even in times of stress.

I head into the huge dark stone and glass shower, pressing a button that activates all five of the shower heads. I turn the heat up high and step in as soon as steam starts to curl and rise. Once I’m under the shower’s comforting heat, though, I’m at a loss.

I keep trying to focus on Charles, on the race and the blackmail scheme. On how furious I am at Bram, that he’d let himself get in so deep that he’s compromising me. And Kit, who barely even fucking knows Bram.

But at every turn, I have to think about Kit, and that inevitably leads to the same series of questions. Those questions lead to the same answers, and I can’t handle the way those answers make me feel.

Was she really pregnant?

I thought we were so careful. But I can smell a liar from a mile away, and I don’t think Charles was feeding me bullshit about any of it…

Why didn’t she tell me?

She didn’t trust me. I was an insensitive prick about her father’s scandal, and she realized I’m not exactly father material. Or at least I wasn’t at nineteen years old.

Is there some way that maybe it wasn’t mine?

No. What Kit and I had back then, what we have now, it’s deep and real. There’s no one else, never has been. I can’t imagine a single scenario where she gets knocked up and it’s not mine.

I keep kicking these same thoughts around, a vicious cycle, and wondering what I’m supposed to take from it all.

Am I that terrible, that Kit couldn’t confide in me? What was she going to do, go raise it by herself in the States and never tell me about it?

The thought of Kit as a single mother, trying to raise my kid alone, it just guts me.

When Asher died, I thought that the years of being a spoiled, privileged playboy had finally caught up with me, that I was getting what I was owed from the universe. All that pain, all that self-loathing, I clung to it, blaming myself.

And yes, I was partly to blame. I’ll always bear that burden.

But this… this thing with Kit, her getting pregnant… She’d just lost her father, her family name was worthless, her mother had vanished into herself, and all Kit really had was me.

And fucking asshole that I am, my response to her questions about our future? Maybe… we could keep it secret… I could meet someone else…

I lean against the shower wall, water pounding down on me, and I struggle to draw breath. If I was the crying type, I would cry. If I was a junkie, I would get lit right this fucking second.

This feeling, this weight, it’s unbearable.

I have to do something. Before today, I would have given Kit the world just to see her happy.

Now, I feel like I owe it to her.

I turn off the shower when it finally goes cold, yanking a towel from the warming rack and wrapping it around my body. I walk over to the huge vanity mirror over the sink and wipe away the steam, looking at my reflection.

I wince; I don’t like myself right now, considering that all the shit I did in the past created the motherfucker I’m staring at in the mirror.

I turn and leave my reflection behind, toweling off and getting dressed in brusque motions.

In all the confusion and turmoil, I know one thing: the story can never, ever get out.

Not for me, not for the sake of the royal family.

For Kit. Because I don’t want the thing that I did, that I did to her and made her go through alone, to ruin her again. That fucking story is never going to see the light of day. She’s never going to feel public shame over this, because she’s already carried too much of this weight on her own, in secret.

Right then and there, yanking a t-shirt down over my head, I make a promise to myself and to Kit.

I will make this go away… even if I have to kill Charles with my bare fucking hands.

And I know inside, even though I’m the fucking bastard who fucked her over in the first place, that I’d do anything to protect Kit. Anything at all, regardless of the consequences to myself.

Because she’s my girl.

Because she’s sexier and more glamorous than any other woman I’ve ever met.

Because since she’s come back into my life, I can’t even look at another woman, don’t fucking want to either.

Because she cares about me, even though I’m a fucking prick.

Because she understands me, from my royal pedigree all the way down to my tarnished soul.

Because she makes me happy, the one fucking bright spot in my bullshit-filled life right now.

Fuck. I need to just admit it, even if it’s just to myself.

Because I fucking love her.

And no one’s ever going to fuck with her again.

No one.