“How awful.”
“My mother was furious with my aunt, and angry with my father for siding with Aunt Alecine. She told him he could go to Daxon, pledge his loyalty and turn my aunt in to keep us safe and keep our standing in society. But Father refused.”
“Family duty,” Briony murmured softly.
“Family honor,” Cass corrected. “My father and aunt had plenty. My mother had none.”
“So you fled.”
“We fled. We made our way to Rome. It took a year for us to climb out of the little hovel of an apartment we lived in. My father and aunt crafted new identities for themselves, worked whatever jobs they could find to slowly build their way back up while trying to stay under the radar in case Daxon caught wind of where we were and changed his mind about coming after us.” The gingham hanging over the cracked window flashed in his mind. “One night my aunt came home with this red gingham tablecloth. She hung it over a window that had cracked when some boys threw rocks at our window. Every time she tried to hang it, wind would come through the crack and blow it down. She finally started to cry and kept telling me over and over how sorry she was.” He could still see her face, eyes puffy as tears ran down her cheeks. “She told me how she wished she could have stood up to Daxon and saved my father and me from everything.”
“So you decided one day you would stand up to Daxon for her.”
Cass’s head snapped around as he faced Briony, surprised that she had so quickly seized on the moment he’d decided to get revenge.
“Yes.”
“Cass, you were eleven,” she said quietly. “That was too much to take on.”
“It wasn’t. My father lost my mother, a woman he had loved and who, when she was younger, loved him enough to defy her family and marry him when he was just a lowly lawyer versus the trust-fund prince they had picked out for her. My mother made her own choices,” he acknowledged, “but without Daxon’s labeling my aunt and father traitors, their marriage wouldn’t have ended.”
“You don’t know that,” Briony argued. “A woman who would leave her husband when he needed her the most could have left for any number of other reasons later on in life.”
“But she didn’t,” Cass ground out. “She left because Daxon threatened to throw my aunt in prison for treason, as well as anyone who aligned with her.”
“And your father chose your aunt.”
“Not over my mother.” Cass’s voice vibrated with anger. “She accused him of the same thing. But he knew it was only a matter of time before our family would be targeted, too. It wasn’t just choosing to support his sister. He was the first one to mention to my aunt that he had found some troubling inaccuracies in some financial documents. My aunt is smart, very smart, when it comes to finances. Her relationship with Daxon was turning ugly. So she started compiling evidence.” A vein began to throb in his neck. “My aunt lost her whole life. She lost everything, as did my father, and no one bothered to stand up to a tyrant.”
Briony didn’t back down from his anger. She just continued to watch him with those eyes so like his oppressor’s, yet so different. Where Daxon’s were hard, flinty chips of green, Briony’s were warm and vibrant, a window into her soul.
“Obviously your aunt had a change in fortune, at least.”
A quick smile flashed. “My aunt made her way up from cleaning bathrooms in a hotel to working as a blackjack dealer in the hotel’s casino. One night she dealt cards for the reigning prince of Tulay, Daniel Callas. She beat him every hand that first night. He came back every night for a week, then proposed on his last night in Rome.”
“That sounds romantic.”
“More like the result of loneliness. Daniel was a widower. He married my aunt because he liked her and she didn’t kowtow to him. The papers termed it a ‘whirlwind courtship,’ dug up her past with your father and labeled her a crown-seeking gold digger. But after a year of making significant improvements in everything from Tulay’s tourism industry to housing reform, the rumors faded and the people embraced her.”
“And you became a billionaire.”
He shrugged. “Not without help. Daniel sent me to university. He placed me in charge of one of his holdings, a shipping company. I invested the money I made, diversified into real estate, tourism and transportation. My investments paid off. I told myself one day I would return to Linnaea and offer your father a loan to rebuild the country.”
“From what little I overheard this evening, I take it accepting a loan from someone related to his former mistress who almost destroyed him angered him?”
“Enraged is more like it,” said Cass with a small smile. “But Daxon is not without his pride, either. I knew that just the financial offer, even though almost no one else would be willing to put so much money on the line with the country’s economic history, would not be enough to sway him.”
“But I was.” Briony’s voice was small, shock and understanding as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.
“Yes. Daxon has made no secret about his reputation as a womanizer. But aside from getting photographed with his date of the month on his arm, he’s kept most of the sordid details private. He’d made no secret that aside from Alaric, he didn’t want any more children. For an illegitimate child to be revealed, and for it to be known that he had done nothing to support that child once he found out about its existence, would have been a death sentence for him publicly. He’s sick. From what the doctors say, he has less than a year to live. He knows his legacy as a leader is in tatters. The financial offer, combined with his chance to be seen as righting the wrongs of his past and doing right by his child, were more important than rejecting me. Marital alliances still serve a purpose in many parts of the world, and it acts as insurance that Daxon won’t back out.”
“And you have your revenge by being the sole savior of Linnaea, getting your family’s banishment reversed and marrying into the very family that rejected you.”
Briony’s voice was flat, her face emotionless. Coldness swept through Cass. He had had those almost exact same thoughts. But when stated out loud, they sounded truly heartless.
Briony frowned. “But why did Daxon not have Alaric marry someone for financial support, or even Daxon himself get married?”
“Alaric has been engaged to some heiress for years. I don’t know the details, only that every attempt he’s made to finalize the marriage has been rebuffed. I don’t think he has high hopes for it ever happening, but he’s trapped by a contract. As for Daxon, his reputation is so well-known in the right circles that no woman with the financial resources he needs would agree to a marriage with him.”