CHAPTER ONE
HELENECOSIMAD’TIERRZA, inheritor of the great d’Tierrza fortune and titles—including the duchy—and seventh in line for the throne of Cyrano, stood unsteadily before the marble statue that dominated her family’s private courtyard.
Her silver-blond bangs feathered across her brow, swaying in time with her body’s slight motion, while her normally sharp sapphire-blue eyes glared with unfocused intensity at the carved figure’s face. Her dress was a long column of azure. Strapless and simple, it emphasized the elegant length of her figure rather than the unexpected muscle tone of her arms and chest. The dress flared gently at its base to provide what she supposed was a generous allowance for walking...if one minced.
Disgust curled her lips, the effect all the more striking for the fullness of her wide mouth.
Today might be the one day of the year she conceded to wearing a dress, but she never minced.
It was also the one day of the year when she drank.
Both the dress and the drink contributed to the uncharacteristic wobble in her stance.
With her arms crossed in front of her chest and a half-empty flute of champagne loosely clasped in one hand, angled at a slight tilt, she was also uncharacteristically alone. She had no one to guard and no staff lingered in the shadows. They were occupied with the guests gathered in the large seascape courtyard who mingled and drank, all in the dubious name of her father’s legacy.
The king and queen, two of her most constant companions, were in attendance, as was her fellow queen’s guard, Jenna Moustafa, who was on solo duty with backup from the king’s guard while Hel played dress-up.
The crease between her eyebrows deepened. She should be out there with her friends, alert and ready to back up Moustafa should the need arise. It would certainly be a better use of her time than standing in front of her father’s likeness, once again engaged in the silent battle of wills that hadn’t so much as ended with the end of his life, as become unwinnable. Not that she ever had a chance when he’d been alive. No one stood a chance against Dominic d’Tierrza.
Hel wouldn’t be the one to throw in the towel, though. Her father didn’t deserve the satisfaction.
Not even in death.
Instead, she sneered at the statue. “You’ve really outdone yourself this year, Papa. Already raised two million and we haven’t even had dinner yet.”
He said nothing in response.
He wouldn’t have, had he been alive, either. Speaking about money was gauche and two million a paltry sum. He would have raised four by this point in the afternoon had he been around to run things. His permanently raised eyebrow said as much.
Not up to the standard of the d’Tierrza name.
Though just a memory, the oft-repeated words remained an acid refrain.
Her father had been old-fashioned, autocratic and hateful. She’d only learned the last in her teens. He cared about the family line and that alone.
A daughter was a bargaining chip to be played to the family’s best advantage, nothing more. A wife past childbearing years, even less.
He had encouraged Helene, named after the beautiful cause of the Trojan War, to be lovely and amenable, a prize all men would covet.
So she had become loud and opinionated and learned to fight.
She’d also gone out into the world and gotten involved, gotten dirty, done everything she could to prove that Helene d’Tierrza was the furthest thing from the marriage material her father wanted her to be as was possible.
It hadn’t been enough.
Nothing, not even truly diverging from her “correct” path to become a royal guard, had truly been enough to get back at him, to balance the scales. Not when he’d been alive and certainly not now that he was dead.
Not when he still cast such a long shadow over her life. Over her mother’s.
She couldn’t even believe they were doing an event in his name. There was nothing honorable about her father’s legacy—it was only criminal.
She could literally recite a list of crimes.
But she never did, merely carried it around with her—a small penance for the ills he wrought on the world, and the only one she’d been allowed. On the point that the d’Tierrzas were important to national security, it seemed the world agreed with her father.
She and her mother kept their dirty laundry hidden in the dark and everyone benefitted. And maybe if she dedicated every living and breathing moment to serving justice, it might make up for the lie...if not the actual sins of her father.
Besides, the money they raised went to charities across the entire island nation.