The Secret Casseveti Baby
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Nina Milne
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CHAPTER ONE
JODI PETROVELLI STARED out of the hostel window at the surrounding gardens, fragrant and vibrant with frangipani and palm trees in abundance. The squawk and shriek of birds interspersed with the noise from the busy Indian streets—the cries of street vendors selling the dosai and idlis and other spiced dishes she had grown to love in her weeks on Jalpura.
For a moment she contemplated the twist and turn of fate that had brought her to this lush Indian island, ruled by a mix of royalty and government. To start with it had been a whim. Her brother, Luca, had told her how beautiful the island was—Luca owned a renowned chocolate company and he had recently discovered a type of cocoa bean grown on Jalpura. So whilst on her travels Jodi had decided Jalpura was worth a visit.
As if on cue the ping of her phone distracted her and she glanced down to see a message from Luca.
Just checking in. Hope all is good and the new job is going well. Luca.
Now guilt pinged as loudly as her phone had. Because she’d run away and left her brother to face the shitshow that had come about after their father’s death. Not that she considered James Casseveti to be her father in any meaningful way—he had left when Luca was five, before Jodi had even been born.
The old familiar desolation surfaced, a different type of guilt bred in her bone. The fear that it had been Jodi who had driven him away, that perhaps if Therese hadn’t been pregnant with Jodi, James would have stayed with the wife and son he loved instead of disappearing over the horizon, that she was the catalyst that caused him to abandon his family.
Never to return. Literally. Not for a single visit, so Jodi had never seen her father, never heard his voice speak her name, never held his hand or ridden on his shoulders. James had never so much as acknowledged her existence.
His loss, she told herself, time and again. Even as she’d known it wasn’t. After all, James had gone on to a glittering life of success, had married the woman he’d left them for, rich, aristocratic Lady Karen Hale. Then, using her money and connections, he’d set up a globally successful dessert business, Dolci, and led a fulfilling, happy, prosperous life. With his new family. His new wife, Karen, and his daughter. Ava. Ava Casseveti.
The name enough to conjure up a familiar sense of anger, to twist the spiral of envy in her chest. Stop. Jodi knew how stupid, how destructive it was to compare herself to the half-sister she’d never met. Knew too that it wasn’t Ava’s fault that she was the apple of her father’s eye. His true daughter.
But no amount of knowledge eased the pain.
A pain compounded by the image of Ava that now pervaded her brain—the epitome of beauty, tall with endless legs, corn-blonde hair that rippled allure and classic features made arresting by a pair of amber eyes. Looks that had catapulted Ava to supermodel fame.
Whilst genetics had programmed Jodi to be short with impossible-to-tame black curls with a dollop of frizz, and no model attributes whatsoever. Her nose was retroussé; her dark eyes resembled mud rather than a semi-precious jewel.
Not only had Ava been endowed with beauty, she had also been gifted with brains, business acumen, drive and ambition. She’d cut her modelling career short to enter the family business, to take her place as the heiress to Dolci. Jodi contemplated her own less than illustrious career. She’d drifted from one job to the next: waitress, PA, retail assistant, dog walker. James Casseveti had definitely pulled the long straw, picked the right daughter to acknowledge and love.
Jodi closed her eyes and dug her nails into her palms, exactly as she did whenever Ava entered her head, the gesture a throwback to a childhood where her half-sister had permeated her dreams, her adolescence where Ava had seemed to mock her, to exist solely to demonstrate Jodi’s inadequacies.
Block her out. The Cassevetis meant nothing to her. Her only wish to paint them out of her life.
Only now she no longer could.
Because in death James Casseveti had surprised them all. He’d left a third of Dolci to each of his children: Luca, Jodi and Ava. The news had impacted Jodi with such a hit of emotion she was still reeling months later. Anger that James Casseveti thought she could be bought off, fury that he hadn’t even left her a letter, a note, anything personal. Panic that this made it impossible for Jodi to pretend Ava didn’t exist. More anger that James Casseveti had intruded on her life. And so many emotions because now he was no longer here, there could never be a chance of her seeing him, hearing his voice.
In the end Jodi had taken the best option available: she’d run away. Of course, she’d spoken to Luca first, got his blessing. Her big brother understood, told her it was fine, that he’d deal with it. And so she’d fled...to Thailand, to India...had let the wonders of travel absorb and deflect her attention. She knew Luca to be more than capable of facing the flak and the publicity—he was tough and in truth preferred to face things alone without his little sister to worry about.
Without her there Luca could focus on what he did best. Make tough business decisions. Because Luca was like Ava. Driven, ambitious, successful.
The poisonous thought began its spread—the tendril of fear that Luca and Ava would be drawn to each other, bond over their similarities... For heaven’s sake. Enough. Luca loved her and she loved Luca. Nothing could break their bond; they’d grown up together. Luca would do anything for her. And anyway, soon enough Jodi would return; she knew that she couldn’t run for ever. Just a few more weeks.
But now it was time to go to work. Jodi glanced at the mirror as she did every day before work to remind herself that here on Jalpura she was known as Jemma Lewes, not Jodi Petrovelli. A ruse to ensure no reporter would track her down as interest grew in the Dolci inheritance and its tales of usurpers, skeletons in closets, abandoned families and Ava Casseveti, beautiful heiress.
Jodi closed her eyes. Soon enough she’d go home. Face it all. Soon...but not yet. For now she would enjoy being Jemma Lewes, temporary assistant to Princess Alisha of the Jalpuran royal court, helping to organise the royal film festival. Jodi turned from her reflection, grabbed her shoulder bag and headed for the door of the hostel, situated a few minutes’ walk from the royal palace of Jalpura.
Prince Carlos of Talonos surveyed the royal palace of Jalpura; disbelief still crowded his brain that he was here, on his first royal assignment in a decade. Because ten years ago he’d walked away from his royal status. Such as it had been. The status of an eldest son who could never be heir.
Talonos royal law had decreed that any child born out of wedlock and over the age of six months when the parents married could not be heir. His father had married his mother, Catalina Drakos, a commoner who worked in the palace kitchens, when Carlos was six months and three days old.
It was only many years later that Carlos understood why.
All he’d known as a child was his father’s coldness and distance was mitigated by his mother’s love for him, a love he’d never doubted even though he’d sensed the misery that underlay it, masked by mood swings where her exuberance would almost scare him.
‘Don’t worry, baby, Papa is just a bit mad at Mama. He’ll come round. Because we love each other.’
‘Don’t worry, Carlos. Papa will make it right. You will be King. Because Papa loves me. Loves me. Loves me. And I love you.’
And then when he was six, his mother had died.
Remembered horror shivered through Carlos. The dark hazy recall of finding her body blocked out the bright rays of the Jalpuran sun and he was transported back in time.
To his six-year-old self. Running into his mother’s bedroom—he’d painted a picture and he wanted to show her. The still wet paper clutched in his hand, daubed with bright stick figures. His excitement slowly morphed to confusion when she didn’t respond, didn’t sit up, take his hands, twirl him in a dance round the room as she told him what a clever boy he was, how one day he’d grow up to be a talented artist and amazing king.
But that day there was no praise, no dance, nothing, and his feet had frozen to the ground at the realisation that something was wrong. There was an eerie immobility about his mother, even her long blonde hair seemed completely still. Then his nurse, his mother’s close friend, Daria, had swept into the room and swept him away, told him his mamma was not feeling well.
After that his memories were fuzzy; Daria had gone and his dreaded father had summoned him, told him that his mother was dead, had died after a ‘tragic short illness’, a verdict he didn’t understand.
Nothing had made sense to the devastated little boy he’d been; all his six-year-old mind could compute was that the one person who loved him was gone and was never ever coming back. And without her he was truly alone in the world. At the mercy of a father who could barely stand to look at him, and then a year later under the care of a stepmother who saw him as a threat and an affront to the royal blood. And soon enough it became clear that he was not going to be a king; instead he was destined to be an invisible prince, the one with ‘tainted blood’. The one sent away to a series of boarding schools, encouraged to spend holidays there, allowed ‘home’ on rare occasions. And when he was at home, he was kept apart, in a suite of rooms far away from his ‘family’, shunned by his half-brother, Juan, who was brought up to remain aloof, though in public the King and Queen were careful to present the illusion of a united ‘happy family’.
But through the years he held the warmth of his mother’s love, her memory, close to him like a blanket of comfort. If only she had lived it would all be different.
Until his world had imploded. When Carlos was thirteen Daria had sought him out in secret, asked to meet him. He’d snuck out late one summer evening, met her in a secluded part of public park and there in the night-time breeze he’d learnt the truth.
He’d known it wasn’t good news, had seen the grief and pain on Daria’s face and for a moment he’d wanted to cover his ears as he had as a child, close his eyes and refuse to read the letter she held out. The envelope scrawled with his name, written in his mother’s hand. The jolt of recognition had moved him backwards, the wooden slat of the bench hard against his back.
But in the end he’d read the letter, seen the words he didn’t want to believe and his world had crumbled.
Dearest Carlos,
I am so sorry for leaving you, but I can’t see any other way out. I have failed you, my dearest, and I cannot live with that.
Ever since you were born all I have wanted for you was your birthright. I believed your father loved me, that he was going to marry me. When he said he couldn’t marry me, that his family would never allow it, I took matters into my own hands.
I thought I was doing the right thing. I tricked your father into marriage; I claimed I was dying, that I wanted my son to be legitimate. I understood that if he married me when you were over six months, technically you couldn’t be heir, but I thought your father would be able to change that law when he came to the throne.
So I announced our secret wedding to the world and your father had no choice. To reject me, us, would have caused public outcry. He had to accept the marriage—but I thought it would make him happy.
It didn’t—he was furious. And still I didn’t get it. I thought he was afraid of his family, was toeing the royal line. That he loved me, loved us.
I kept trying to believe that. Through all these years I told myself that love would win. Today I realised it wouldn’t...that love is worth nothing. It is now two years since your father ascended the throne and he still has not changed.
Today I confronted him and he told me that he will never change the law. That I killed any love he could have felt for me or you when I tricked him. That he will divorce me and marry a true princess and worthy queen who will bear him children. Children who do not have tainted blood.
So now I have to face the truth. He will never love me and, worse, you will never be King and the fault is mine.
I am so sorry, Carlos—I cannot watch this happen. I cannot go on any more. I do not have the strength or the will. I crave peace and silence.
Please know I love you with all my heart, however worthless that love is.
Keep this ring to remember me by. It is from my family.
I hope you are happy, my son.
All my love,
Mama
The words danced before his eyes as his world tilted on its axis. His mother had taken her own life. Anger burned inside him, against his father who had driven his wife to her death. No matter that he had been tricked, it did not excuse or mitigate his cruelty.
But under the veneer of anger was the burn of guilt. Because everything Catalina had done, she’d done for him; the steps she’d taken on the path to tragedy had been done in Carlos’s name, to win him a throne. And in the end she could not face a life where that did not happen. In the end Carlos hadn’t been enough, his love for her worthless, not enough to make life worth living. The love he’d always believed in, trusted in, was now tarnished, no longer a weighted blanket of comfort to hold to him in a loveless world.
Of course, he had confronted his father. King Antonio had looked at him with shadowed eyes.
‘Yes. Your mother spoke truth. I did not wish you to know but now you do. I will not discuss this. And if you try to create difficulties I will deny it and I will make sure your old nurse suffers for telling you this information. What is done is done, Carlos. Get on with your life.’
Once he was eighteen he’d done just that. Left Talonos, determined to dismiss his father, his heritage, his tainted royalty from his mind. He had rebranded himself as Carl Williamson and built a life for himself, a very successful life. And after that he had visited home on increasingly rare occasions, simply to help sustain the spin that he was a welcome family member.
Then a few days ago he’d been summoned home. His father, white with rage, had evinced no joy at seeing his eldest son.
‘Some fool has dug up an ancient statute, one that declares that although you were over six months old when I married your mother you are in fact the heir to the throne of Talonos.’
Carlos had stood and gaped at him, pushed down the hysterical guffaw of laughter that threatened.
‘It is nonsense, of course.’
Only it couldn’t be, otherwise his father would never have recalled him.
‘But whilst I sort it out, it would be good to show Talonos and the world that the case is being given a fair hearing. Revolt is brewing and how this is handled could shake the very foundations of the throne. We will need to renew the illusion of family unity. However, we would prefer you do not stay here, so you will go to Jalpura.’
The Indian island that had long since been an ally to the Mediterranean isle of Talonos, an alliance forged centuries ago, when a Prince of Talonos married a Jalpuran princess and secured a lucrative trade deal in exotic spices.
‘The Queen understands the situation and you can take your brother’s place as ambassador to the royal film festival.’
The annual festival organised by Talonos and Jalpura to showcase European and Indian films.
So here he was. Perhaps he should have refused, agreed to give up his claim and returned to his normal life. But how could he? Lord knew he had never expected to rule Talonos, but he loved his land. The deep scent of its soil that provided the luscious olives and plump grapes, the abundancy of nature’s offerings. He loved the people, the hardy farmers, many of them from families that had worked the earth for generations, nurtured the olive groves that resulted in olive oils known the world over, the cosmopolitan townspeople, the workers who produced the intricate lace and fabrics Talonos was famous for. His country. This was a chance to return, to one day rule, fulfil his mother’s dream for him. To vindicate her death.
As if. He knew his father—King Antonio would move heaven and earth to make sure Carlos did not succeed him. The idea grated raw and he plunged his hands into his pockets, grimaced as he recalled he wasn’t wearing his usual suit trousers or jeans. Instead he’d had to rapidly adapt his wardrobe, had packed quickly and the lightweight chinos he wore had shallow pockets that caught at the size of his clenched hands.
He gazed at the palace, felt his scowl deepen. Enough of royalty. He did not need to report to the palace until Monday—he would spend the weekend exploring Jalpura before he made an attempt at ambassadorial duties.
Distracted by his thoughts, he realised he had wandered closer to the palace. Time to back away; he had no wish to be recognised by some palace official.
As he turned, his gaze snagged on a woman who exited the palace and headed down the steps. He wasn’t sure exactly what had caught his attention—she looked to be about his age, mid to late twenties, and although pretty there was nothing special about her that he could identify. Unless it was perhaps her look of intent thought, as if she was wrestling with an internal dilemma. Short dark curls swung and danced round a heart-shaped face. She was petite, and simply dressed in a floral sundress, sunglasses pushed up and perched on top of her head.
As if aware of his scrutiny, she paused and looked around, and he saw her expression morph to one of suspicion. Instantly he swivelled away, started walking, embarrassed at the idea of being caught staring, unsure why he even had been. Not his style to have his head turned by a pretty woman and certainly not his style to gawp or make any woman uncomfortable. Ridiculous that he still had to fight the urge to turn and watch her walk away.
Yet when he heard the sound of footsteps and then a female voice behind him say, ‘Excuse me,’ he somehow knew that it was the same woman.
He turned and saw his instinct was correct; the dark-haired woman stood there, pushed a quick impatient hand at an errant curl. Possibilities jostled in his head: perhaps she wished to confront him; worse, perhaps she’d recognised him, was some sort of palace official sent out to drag him inside.
‘You dropped this.’
‘Oh.’ He looked at the silver ring she held out: his mother’s ring. The one he’d worn every day since he left Talonos. It must have somehow dislodged when he plunged his hands into the new chino pockets. Relief flooded through him that this woman had picked it up, had been honest enough, bothered enough to come after him. The idea of losing this precious talisman, his link to his tragic mother, the one thing she had left him, unthinkable. He wore it constantly, the chance of it slipping off remote, and for an instant he wondered if it were some sort of sign. Told himself he was a fool.
Yet as he reached to take the ring from her, his fingers inadvertently grazed her upturned palm and an inexplicable frisson ran through him. He stilled as her brown eyes widened, her gaze flickered upwards to meet his and held, and in that moment with the ring between them Carlos felt a shimmer of a connection, a sparkle that he could almost see. Ridiculous. He was not a fanciful man and he forced his vocal cords into action. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s no trouble.’ Her voice breathless.
‘Yes, it was. Or at the very least it was a kindness. I would like to repay that.’
‘No. Really. There is no need.’
‘Yes. There is. I want to. This ring means a lot to me and I want to do something to say thank you.’ As they spoke the words seemed almost surreal in their normality, because he felt anything but normal. Her eyes were still on his and almost without his realising it they had moved closer, so close he could see the dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose, smell the elusive scent of jasmine soap. See the depth of brown of her wide eyes, a brown that held a glimmer of amber and surprise, as if she too were poleaxed. And that sense of connection grew and deepened.
He heard her small gulp, and then, ‘OK. Perhaps you could make a donation to your favourite charity.’
‘Done.’ Carlos knew this was when he should walk away, but he didn’t want to. Every instinct urged him to keep talking, told him he’d regret it if he didn’t. Even though he knew it didn’t make any sort of sense. ‘But I’d like to do something else. Something for you. Could I buy you a coffee or a cake or dinner?’
She hesitated and now her eyes searched his and he saw wariness haze them. ‘I don’t even know your name.’
‘That’s easily remedied.’ Now it was he who hesitated, though only for a fraction of a second. ‘I’m Carl. Carl Williamson.’ There was no need to mention his royal status—he didn’t want to explain, or see her expression change, or be judged. For the past ten years he had been Carl Williamson; that was the man he wanted this woman to know. If she agreed to a coffee, he wanted it to be with Carl. ‘And you? What is your name?’
Her gaze flicked away and back, and then she held out her hand. ‘Jemma. Jemma Lewes.’
‘Good to meet you, Jemma. So, what do you think? Coffee? Dinner? A drink? How can I say thank you?’
Telling himself her answer didn’t matter, Prince Carlos of Talonos held his breath as he awaited it.
