Princes of Castaldini: The Once and Future Prince

OLIVIA GATES has always pursued creative passions—painting, singing and many handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career: writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding Angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates. com.

Princes of Castaldini

The Once and

Future Prince

The Prodigal

Prince’s Seduction

The Illegitimate

King

Olivia Gates

To Melissa Jeglinski.

Thank you for the wonderful new path. I wish you

happiness and success in everything you endeavor, MJ.

To Natashya Wilson, my incredible editor.

Can’t be happier that we’re a team, Tashya.

Eight hundred years ago, Antonio D’Agostino founded the Mediterranean kingdom of Castaldini. With a culture mixing Italian and Moorish influences, the kingdom was unique. But what set it apart from the world’s monarchies was the succession law Antonio D’Agostino created. He knew none of his sons was fit to wear a crown after him, so he decreed that the succession would not be by blood but by merit. Anyone from the extensive D’Agostino clan, all now considered the royal family, could prove himself worthy of being the next king. He set stringent rules that had to be satisfied before someone could be a candidate for the crown, including that the selection of the next king had to be with the unanimous approval of the royal council of the reigning king.

And the other rules? That the future king be of impeccable reputation, of sturdy health and no vices, of solid lineage from both sides, a leader people followed due to the power of his character and charisma, and above all, a self-made success of the highest order.

So it had always been—D’Agostino men vying for the crown, striving to deserve it. Throughout history, one D’Agostino man always won over all competitors and claimed the crown. He chose his council from the royal family and during his reign selected the next king to be his crown prince, so that the transition of power occurred smoothly in case anything befell him.

And the kingdom’s motto was Lasci l’uomo migliore vincere.

Let the best man win.

Prologue

Eight years ago

“Come closer, Phoebe. I won’t bite. Not too hard.”

Leandro’s rumble reverberated in Phoebe’s bones.

She choked on the surge of response, on the breath that was trapped inside her lungs. The breath she’d been holding waiting for him to contact her. The one she always held until he did.

She still couldn’t breathe. He stood as if carved from rock, staring out of his penthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows at the Manhattan skyline, which glittered like clusters of stars set in arcane patterns. Her starved senses registered only him.

The power of his physique, the silken layers crowning his head, dimmed spotlights overhead caressing copper overtones from the hairs’ deepest mahogany. Her hands stung with the memory of convulsing in that hair as he’d exposed her to the mercilessness of his pleasuring.

His scent invaded her with a maleness and a potency that were only his, an aphrodisiac even from the distance he bade her to eliminate. He’d already gotten her to travel four thousand miles to “come closer.”

Eight hours ago, she’d received a message from Ernesto—Leandro’s right-hand man, and their secret go-between—during Julia’s daily physiotherapy session. She’d thought he was inviting her to yet another clandestine rendezvous, one even more secret because Leandro’s situation in Castaldini was more delicate than ever after his resignation from his ambassador post. But she hadn’t found Leandro. Just his jet. There’d been no word from him all through the seven-hour flight to New York.

There hadn’t been one in four months. She’d feared silence had been his way of informing her it was over. But it wasn’t….

“I turned thirty, two months ago.”

She lurched at his rasp, a twist of longing in her gut. She’d known that. On October 26th. The urge to call him that day had frayed what had remained intact of her nerves. But his rules had been clear. He contacted her. It had seemed he wouldn’t anymore.

“Happy birthday.” She winced as the lame response left her lips.

His huff abraded her. “Indeed. The happiest birthday ever.”

He turned to her then. She would have staggered if she hadn’t been incapable of moving a muscle, even involuntarily.

“Nothing more to say, bella malaki?” My beautiful angel. The endearment shuddered through her, that mix of Italian and Moorish only he used. He prowled toward her, his shirt phosphorescent in the dimness, unbuttoned to his waist, revealing chiseled power that bunched and gleamed with every step. “Shall I make it easier? Give you a lead?” He stopped half a breath away, his emerald eyes flaring and subsiding like pulsars. “Miss me?”

She’d thought so. She’d been wrong. She’d starved for him.

He reached out to her, warm, large hands singeing her, steadying her body, shaking everything else. “Shall I find out?”

Yes, her every cell shrieked.

But he did nothing, stilled. She started to shake.

The moment her tremors hit him, his pupils obliterated his irises, black holes that sucked coherence from her mind, wrenched hunger from her depths. She pitched forward, a helpless satellite yanked to an inexorable planet, hurtled into his containment.

It was like a dam had burst. Violent. Deluging. Their mouths collided, merged, flooding her with what she’d never thought to find until him. Oneness. Need that sliced her open.

Her world churned, with the delight of reconnection, with his savagery and what it betrayed of a hunger as searing as hers as his power bore them deeper into passion.

“Next time, bellezza helwa…next time I’ll take hours…days to worship you…but this time…this time…”

He threw her down, and she could only moan as she sank into the luxury of silk sheets and his scent, anticipation becoming agony as their clothes disappeared under the force of his impatience. Her arms shook, begged for his possession. He obeyed, impacted her with the force she was gasping for, thrust inside her, no preliminaries, no way to withstand any, fierce and full and beyond her endurance, razing her with pleasure, ripping an orgasm from the core that clenched around his invasion. He snatched her scream of release into his ravaging mouth, roared his own, jetting into her depths to the rhythm of her convulsions until she lay beneath him, boneless. Devoured. Replete. Leandro. Her lion man. Back in her life. No longer in secret…?

He drove deeper inside her, ending questions. She arched beneath him, taking, offering all. He growled into her neck, the darkness of it shaking through her with the reverberation of satiation, the accumulation of renewed need.

Until the words it carried lodged in her brain.

“I will never return to Castaldini.”

Everything stilled. She knew the situation had been tense for him in Castaldini. But not to return there, ever? Nothing could be that bad. That final. Could it?

She squirmed beneath his suddenly crushing weight. “What d-do you mean you w-won’t return? You have to…”

He pulled back, stared down at her for a long, incredulous moment, before he made an explosive sound deep in his gut, then jerked away, separated from her body, left it aching. Bereft.

“You don’t know?”

She winced at his rage. “Know what?”

“Dio, could it be? They’ve kept their decree a secret in Castaldini? This is much worse than I thought. They’re not only culturally and economically isolating Castaldini, they’re keeping it behind their own brand of iron curtain.”

“Please, Leandro…I don’t understand.”

“You want to know what spread like wildfire through the world news before the media found something else to exploit? The trivial news that I, Prince Leandro D’Agostino, whom the world was certain would be named Castaldini’s crown prince and next king, through merit and lifelong achievement—the moment I defied the current king and his men, I was declared a renegade and stripped of all my titles.”

“Oh, no…”

He barked a harsh laugh. “Don’t ‘oh, no’ yet. There’s more. I was stripped of my Castaldinian nationality, too.”

She went still, as if under the weight of a collapsing wall. She struggled for breath. “That c-can’t be true.”

“Oh, it can. I’ve been offered American citizenship and I’ve accepted it. I’m never setting foot on Castaldini again.” Suddenly he hauled her to him, stabbed his fingers into the tumble of her locks, plundered her lips in a kiss that branded her. His urgency chased everything away, had her clinging until he rasped against her lips, “And you’re never going back, either.”

The fierceness of his declaration jolted through her, had her wrenching her lips away. “I have to.”

His eyes became slits of hypnosis as he spread her, loomed over her, the embodiment of her desires. “No, you don’t. This is your country, as it now is mine. You’ll stay with me.”

She wrestled the rest out. “I have to go back to Julia.”

His hand stilled its caresses on her aching-from-pleasure breast. “Oh, yes, your poor dependent sister. The princess with a whole kingdom at her disposal and her service.”

“You know it’s not like that. She needs me.”

“I need you.”

The agonized confession lurched through her heart, each syllable a stab. Of shock.

Out of paralysis, hope started to quiver, only to be stilled in the cold grip of…suspicion.

He needed her? How? And why now? He hadn’t needed her before, apart from the obvious. Leandro didn’t know the meaning of need. His one and only need had been to become king of Castaldini, and nothing else had mattered in his quest for the crown. Least of all her. He’d proved that over and over.

He’d kept her a secret, had escorted other women—especially his second cousin Stella—to formal functions, passing Phoebe with that malignant woman on his arm and nodding to her as if she were nothing more than his cousin Paolo’s sister-in-law.

He’d said he’d done it to divert suspicion from their intimate liaison, which would have damaged both his chance at the crown and her reputation. At first she’d thought his claim that his measures were “to protect them both in these sensitive times” meant that he’d been planning for a future together and was being discreet to protect her reputation in the highly conservative kingdom.

But he certainly hadn’t said or done anything overt to support this belief. And that had been before Stella—who went around swatting away fawning females from Leandro as she would flies—had told her what Phoebe realized she’d been the last to know. A fact that was widely accepted. That in order to take the crown, Leandro would have to marry an “acceptable” woman. And Phoebe was certainly far less acceptable than the royal-blooded Stella D’Agostino. In fact, Stella herself was second best, and it was just as widely known that she’d get him only if his perfect match and ideal running companion for the crown turned him down. That woman was someone who’d become Phoebe’s friend—Clarissa D’Agostino, the king’s daughter.

Now, finally, she let herself face it. The truth. He’d feared exposure not for the sake of their future together, but for his as king. That Clarissa, or even Stella, boosted his chances and she didn’t—she’d never even been in the running for his future bride. That she’d been cowardly, fearing that if she brought up any of her grievances or suspicions, he would have ended their affair. That she’d been so weak, so in love, she’d forced herself not even to think about it, had buried her head in the sand so that she could take what she could get.

But self-deception hadn’t done a thing to stop her anguish from mounting. Hadn’t she become more distraught the closer he’d gotten to the crown? Hadn’t she subconsciously wished he wouldn’t get it, so that he could settle on her? Hadn’t she feared that if he did take it—and Clarissa or Stella with it—and still wanted her, that she wouldn’t be able say no? She’d started to understand how some women ended up being the “other woman.”

And she’d gotten the wish she’d hidden even from herself. He was not in the running for the crown anymore. And he wanted her. Had said what she’d never thought he’d say. That he needed her.

Yeah. Right. After treating her like a dirty secret for more than a year, then cutting her off for four months without a word?

All her anguish burst out of her. “What do you need me for, Leandro? As your on-demand lover, like before? Or perhaps something a bit more permanent, now that you’ve run out of better options? What would I be in your life at this point? The ever-present outlet for your frustrations? The convenient body when you need sexual relief? Would I even be the only one to provide that? Have I been the only one?”

He gaped at her, as if she’d metamorphosed into an alien being right in front of him. The cold rage that crept into his eyes almost made her cringe and cry out a retraction.

Almost. She stood her ground. She had to. She needed to. It felt as if she’d been slowly poisoned by humiliation.

He tore his hands off her, stood and glared daggers at her enervated body. “You’re accusing me, after all I’ve done, all you’ve cost me? Why don’t you be up-front about what’s really happening here, what I suspected during those four months that you didn’t even bother to pick up the phone to inquire if I was alive or dead? I was worth your while when I was lined up to be the next king. Minutes ago you melted in my arms when you still didn’t know there was no longer any chance of that. Now I’m suddenly patently resistible.”

His aggression and the unjust accusations felt like a one-two combo. But the sting only strengthened her resolve, ignited her anger, sent it raging.

She struggled up. “You can think what you like.”

He swooped down on her, dragged her into his arms. “You’re not turning your back on me, too.”

She looked up and started to push at him and…stopped. Slumped into his hold. His eyes. What she saw there hit her harder than a KO would have. Pain. Such Pain.

And it all slotted in her mind. The loss that must be gnawing at him, corroding his spirit as the realization that he’d ceased to be everything that defined him congealed into reality. Need to absorb his pain, need for him hammered at her. And he’d said he needed her….

No. He didn’t need her. He’d never needed her. He just needed to assert his thwarted will, to placate his wounded pride.

All the pain that she’d been fooling herself she hadn’t been accumulating for the past year and a half ripped through her as she tore out of his arms and jerked on her clothes.

“I hope you’ll be very happy in your new country with your miserable view of others and your self-absorption. They sure are winning you many allies.”

He approached her, his fury causing her to freeze. “So first you throw this out-of-the-blue accusation at me, and when I throw back something relevant, instead of showing me I’m wrong, you use it as the excuse to do what you’d do anyway. Desert me. And I’m supposed to take part in this act? Speak the lines where we pretend I’m the callous offender and you’re the noble accused?”

Indignation thawed her. She yanked up her zipper. “It’s I who’ve been reading the lines you dictated. And I’m through.”

“I dictated that you tell me you only felt fully alive when I touched you, took you? That was an act? That’s why it’s so easy to walk away now? To leave me?”

His harshness no longer shook her, only stirred all the pent-up hurt and humiliation she’d hidden from herself. “Leave you? When was I ever with you? All I ever was to you was the adoring fool who stroked your ego when you could spare me the odd hour. You sure liked hearing me say those things, didn’t you? That colossal ego of yours is wounded, and you need a constant supply of worship.” She stopped, panting. Then another wave of bitterness gushed out. “You don’t need me, Leandro—you just need to know that I need you. But contrary to what I may have let you believe, my life doesn’t revolve around you. I have responsibilities and aspirations—I’m not a toy you can drag out whenever you feel the urge.”

“Yet when I felt that urge you begged for more.” He caught her against his body, his rough breathing a furnace blast against her neck as he nuzzled her, his hands dipping below her clothes, one cupping her breast, the other her core, each knowing probe and caress a jolt of stimulation. “Your body is mine, has just writhed in need beneath me, convulsed in pleasure around me, is still begging for me now even as you say otherwise.”

The cruelty of his manipulation of her emotions and responses even as he exposed his true opinion of her smeared her self-worth in the truth. A truth she’d still been hoping she was wrong about.

He cared nothing for her. She’d merely served a purpose to him. Now that she was refusing to serve it anymore, he’d torn off the mask he’d worn around her. Just like he had with his king and country.

She wrenched out of his arms, ran out of his penthouse.

She didn’t stop until she’d put half a world between them.

Where she prayed she’d never hear of or from him again.

One

The present

“Castaldini’s future depends on you.”

The slightly slurred words hit Phoebe Alexander like a sledgehammer.

She gaped at the man who’d spoken them before she’d even cleared the towering doors to his state room. He was approaching her like a slow-motion, head-on collision.

She watched King Benedetto limp across the gigantic Castaldini crest that bulls-eyed the carpet sprawling over acres of mosaic hardwood floor. Each shuffle transmitted its struggle to her muscles. His cane thumped the ground to the rhythm of her haywire heartbeats.

If she hoped she’d misheard what he’d said, he said it again as if to underline the acuteness of her hearing.

“It all depends on you, figlia mia.”

Every word from his mouth tugged on a rawness inside her. She’d come to love him like the father she’d never had, her own having walked out when she was two and her mother was pregnant with her sister, Julia. But she still couldn’t handle him calling her daughter. She sure didn’t belong in the same place in his heart where his grandchildren and their mother—her sister—reigned supreme. She never knew what to do with the reflected affection, but tried to be of as much use as she could to feel entitled to it. She still wasn’t close to feeling that.

How could Castaldini’s future depend on her when it was facing dangers only a king could divert?

She searched his steel-blue eyes for a qualification. They had that look she’d seen during too many crises. It always meant his mind was made up, his decree final. And in her experience, he had yet to be proven wrong.

King Benedetto hadn’t become the longest-reigning and most beloved king since King Antonio for nothing. In her opinion, he was the shrewdest, most effective ruler of the twentieth century. He was also the most controversial, as his politics had practically segregated Castaldini from the rest of the world during his forty-year reign. But his policies had protected the kingdom from the upheavals that had swept the world during those decades. What’s more, this detachment from the global political scene had boosted Castaldini’s allure, translating into a booming tourist industry.

That had lasted until the end of the twentieth century. The twenty-first century hadn’t proven to be his domain so far, and everything seemed to be falling apart. To compound problems, he also held another record. He had ruled the longest without choosing a crown prince.

He’d been a gracefully aging Olympian who everyone believed would live and rule for forty more years, would turn things around in time. Until he’d been struck down by a stroke four months ago. And the lack of a crown prince was now taking on potentially catastrophic meaning.

King Benedetto stopped a dozen steps from her and leaned on his cane, the asymmetry of his injury exaggerating the spasm of suffering and agitation on his face. “I will never recover enough to continue to rule Castaldini.”

She couldn’t even blurt out reassurances. His stroke had sheared his life force in half. It hurt her to see him now, his face emaciated, his ornate regal uniform flapping emptily around a once formidable physique. But she could say one thing and mean it. “Your Majesty, you are improving.”

“No, figlia mia.” He cut across her attempt at qualification. “I’m barely walking, my left side is all but useless and the least illness leaves me bedridden, barely able to breathe.”

“But it’s not like you need to be in peak physical fitness.”

Half of his face softened, appreciating her efforts, pointing out their foolishness. “Yes, I do. You know it’s the Castaldinian law. And it goes beyond that. My mental faculties…”

This she could contest. Vehemently. “Are as sharp as ever!”

His sigh carried such finality she felt her heart plummet. “That’s not true, no matter how much I or you or my council want to believe it. I forget. I…drift. But even if a miracle happens and I’m back in peak health one day, Castaldini can’t afford to wait in hope anymore. The circling vultures are becoming more daring with each passing day, and finding a successor has become an emergency. I cannot afford to dawdle anymore. I’m guilty of doing that for far too long.”

She couldn’t listen to him piling guilt on top of desperation and regret that way. “You did no such thing. According to the law, you couldn’t have picked any of the candidates.”

He shook his head as he limped to the nearest sitting area and slumped into a gilded Aubusson armchair. “But I could have.At least a decade ago. There’s always been not one worthy candidate, but three. Each can take Castaldini forward into this century, which is proving to be even more turbulent than the last, to keep it safe against the dangers hammering down its doors. Yet they are the only three men who will not come forward to be recognized for their eligibility for the crown.”

So there were three D’Agostino men around who had what it took to be the next king? That was news to her. Another bombshell. One that had her mind veering off on a tangent…

No. Not the one man who’d once answered all the criteria. He had once come forward to be recognized for his eligibility. So the king couldn’t be counting him among those three men. Could he?

Her feet started moving again under the influence of curiosity…and foreboding. “So, what’s their problem?”

The king let out an uneven exhalation as she came to stand beside him. “Each has one. Each fulfills all criteria but one. A different one in each man’s case, something that makes him unsuitable for the position by Castaldinian law.”