Modern Romance March 2021 Book 5-8 Carol Marinelli (ebook reader computer txt) 📖

without accounting for. I cannot undo what he did, but I offer you my deepest apologies.” She concluded her speech with a deep bow.

He frowned.

This was not the solidarity he had been looking for.

He needed a rebellious daughter, not a battle-weary soldier.

Though, he supposed, her response was a sort of confirmation of his suspicion that bad blood existed between father and daughter.

From age eleven to sixteen, she had used every public appearance and every form of acting out possible to present a clear picture, at least to Drake, of exactly what she thought of the man.

She had exhausted the typical means of wealthy children by the age of thirteen—wrecking cars, being caught on film smoking, dating older men. It had seemed her actions were more than adolescent rebellions. But then she’d turned to more mature methods.

At thirteen, she became famous for being the youngest accepted applicant for Cyrano’s International Young People’s Volunteer Corps, a humanitarian organization comprised of Cyranese citizens aged eighteen to twenty-six, sparking a sea of rumors of corruption and buying access that were no doubt true, but didn’t prevent her from spending two years in Kazakhstan, mastering the Russian language and establishing an orphanage...into which she funneled an inordinate amount of d’Tierrza cash. The amount itself was the next scandal, far exceeding the highest recorded charitable donations in the nation of Cyrano prior to it. For a while, the joke was that daddy’s little girl had a great big heart and no sense of the value of money. Again, it was clear to Drake, though, that she’d been entirely aware of her actions, and they were intentional.

She was hitting her father strategically.

Looking at her now, though, he realized it went deeper than that.

She wasn’t merely a spoiled girl pushing back against her powerful father.

She was engaged in an honor war.

Helene d’Tierrza hated her father, and she had always taken pains to strike where she could to do the most damage—his pocketbook and his reputation.

The age of sixteen had brought an end to her obviously rebellious days, and by the end the year, marked a lull in her scandalous behavior. That birthday, Dominic d’Tierrza had announced her engagement to a Cyranese lord, the son of a known crony of her father’s.

Three months later, the engagement was over under murky circumstances. The young man left the country. Then, just before she turned seventeen, Helene shocked the world with her greatest scandal yet: enrolling in the Cyranese military academy. She kept a low profile for the remainder of her time in the academy, where she graduated six years later at the top of her class with top honors, as well as a master’s degree in military sciences, making the society pages only for her academy honors.

She shocked Cyrano once more, however, upon graduation. Rather than return to her place in society, she enlisted in and was accepted as a member of the royal guard. That the female heir to the wealthiest aristocratic family in the country would postpone marriage in favor of active military duty was outrageous.

But by twenty-two it was clear that the Rebel Heiress, as she’d been dubbed by the tabloids, had settled into who she was. She’d been assigned to guard the then prince, Zayn, her cousin through her mother’s family, and when his father was assassinated eleven years later, she found herself the guard of a king. Six months after that, upon the death of her father, she nonetheless became the Duchess d’Tierrza, the first female to hold the title in the history of the line. In fact, because there had never been a female head of the family, it had become a colloquial joke to refer to her as the duke.

This was all public knowledge. What Drake had pieced together from his own research, however, was that even after her father died, she continued to attack his legacy.

Rather than growing the d’Tierrza coffers, she managed her estates to perfection, bringing in greater incomes than they ever had under her father’s watch, and donated all but what was required to manage each to charities around the nation. On the surface, it appeared she was increasing her family’s income, but if one looked closely—as Drake had—she was incrementally shrinking the d’Tierrza estate and fortune, funneling wealth back into the community, little by little, through the charitable foundation she and her mother had created in her father’s name.

And if he’d been left with any doubt before he approached her, she’d ended it by throwing a custom champagne flute at his likeness.

As Drake had suspected, her father’s death didn’t seem to have eased any of his daughter’s animosity toward him, and for that, Drake was grateful, as his vengeance hinged on it.

“I’m sorry.” She met his eyes—hers as blue as the deepest ocean—commander to commander, and he knew that her words weren’t empty. He appreciated them, he truly did. But he needed a lot more than an apology from her.

But she wasn’t done yet.

Wrapping her arms around her chest, a gesture that returned his attention to the fact that while she wasn’t naked, she was also not what anyone would reliably describe as fully clothed, she said, “My father was a real bastard.”

The reminder of her state of undress brought with it an unwelcome tightening in his groin, even as discussing her father left a sour taste in his mouth, so he was sharper than he intended to be when he said, “Take one of my shirts,” then nodded toward the door closest to her, which led to his bedroom.

Without commenting on his sudden change of subject, she walked in the direction he indicated and returned with a shirt from his wardrobe.

She had selected quickly, choosing a navy blue button-up. She turned her back to him before she put it on. The back of her blue dress revealed bare shoulders and what remained of it after their chase hugged the long line of her spine before ending at midthigh, where jagged edges revealed the supple skin of her lower