.
I get that you’re somebody. Otherwise you wouldn’t have the limo, lawyer aide guy, documents or a police escort. You know my mother’s name, but you have the wrong person. The Evangeline Poussard who was my mother never went to Europe. She never married. She never would have married off her baby. And she died due to complications with childbirth, not in a terrorist attack.”
“What about the box?” Niko asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe there are identical boxes. Yours and hers.” Isabel shoved the papers at him. “I don’t have time to deal with this. I have work to do.”
With her head held high as if she were the Queen of England and not a lowly mechanic, Isabel turned away from him and marched toward the garage.
Niko’s fingers crumpled the edges of the papers. He tried to remember the last person besides his father who had dismissed him so readily. “Isabel.”
She didn’t glance back.
What an infuriating woman. He wanted to slip into the limousine and forget he’d ever heard the name Isabel Poussard, except he couldn’t. They were tied together. Legally. He needed to undo what had been done without their consent. “Wait.”
She quickened her step. Most women ran toward him not away, but he had a feeling Isabel was different from the women he knew.
“Please,” he added.
She stopped, but didn’t turn around.
He forced himself not to clench his jaw. “Before you go, please look at the photograph.”
Isabel glanced over her shoulder. “What photograph?”
She made him feel more like a peasant than a prince. Likening a wife to a ball and chain suddenly made sense to him if said wife happened to be a strong-willed woman like Isabel Zvonimir.
He removed the picture from the pouch. “The wedding photo.”
She didn’t come closer. “Look, I’m on the clock right now. My boss is watching. I can’t afford to have my pay docked so you can pull a prank.”
“This isn’t a prank.” The old garage needed a new roof and paint job. Niko wondered if Isabel’s financial circumstances were similar to those of her place of employment. “I’ll give you one hundred dollars for five minutes of your time.”
She straightened. “Seriously?”
Now he had her attention. With the pouch and picture tucked between his arm and side, he removed his wallet, pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and held it up. “Quite serious.”
She hurried toward him with her gaze fixed on the bill.
“You really are crazy, but for that kind of money you can have seven minutes.” Isabel snatched the money from him and shoved it in her coverall pocket. “Hand over the picture.”
Niko gave her the photograph. He didn’t need to look at it again. After examining the picture so many times during the flight to Charlotte he had memorized everything about the twelve people in it. “You are the baby in the white gown with the tiara. Your mother is holding you. Your father is standing on the right of you. Your paternal grandparents are the two next to him.”
Isabel held the photo with both hands. Niko watched her face for some sign of recognition of her mother, but saw nothing.
“This looks more like a picture from a baptism than a wedding,” Isabel said.
“Only because of the baby.” Niko repeated what his mother had said to him. “This is a traditional royal wedding pose with the bride and groom in the center and their families on either side.”
Isabel narrowed her gaze. “You’re the little boy in the suit with the light blue sash across your chest?”
“Yes.”
She glanced up at him. “I don’t see much of a resemblance.”
“That was twenty-three years ago.”
Isabel traced his boyhood image. “You don’t look very happy.”
Niko wasn’t very happy right now. He wanted to be rid of this complication, of her. “I imagine a six-year-old boy would not be too happy about getting married.”
“Who is the other boy?” Isabel asked.
“My older brother.”
“Why didn’t they marry the baby off to him?” she asked.
Niko noticed Isabel said “the baby” not “me.” He took a calming breath to keep his patience under check. “Stefan was the crown prince and already betrothed.”
She looked up. “Was?”
“Stefan was killed during the conflict seven years ago.”
Her eyes grew serious. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Niko didn’t want or need her pity, only her cooperation. “All Vernonians suffered losses during the conflict. I intend to make sure that doesn’t happen again. I want to keep the peace and modernize the country.”
“Worthy goals.” Isabel refocused on the photo. “I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing. My uncle Frank had one picture of my mother that wasn’t destroyed when their parents’ house burned down. She looked nothing like this.”
Niko recalled the dossier containing information about Isabel. She didn’t have any living relatives. Her mother had been an only child and orphaned at nineteen following a train derailment that killed her parents. The Zvonimir side of Isabel’s family tree had been killed during the conflict. Nowhere on either side of her family tree had anyone named Frank appeared.
“Who is Uncle Frank?” Niko asked.
“Frank Miroslav,” Isabel said. “My mom’s older half brother. He raised me after she died.”
Miroslav. Niko recognized the surname, but had no idea how it related to Isabel and her American mother. He glanced at Jovan for clarification.
“The Miroslavs served the Zvonimirs for centuries,” Jovan explained. “There was a deep tie and strong loyalty between the two families even though the relationship was master-servant. Franko Miroslav was Prince Aleksander’s chauffeur, and I would go as far to say his best friend. It is rumored that Franko introduced the prince to Evangeline Poussard.”
Isabel’s mouth dropped open. She closed it.
“That would explain how you escaped out of Vernonia and ended up here,” Niko said. “If they used another driver and a doll for the baby after you left the country—”
“No.” Her lips tightened. “The woman in the photo is not my mother.”
“Are you certain the woman in the picture your uncle Frank showed you is your mother?” Niko watched the range of emotions crossing her face. The vulnerability in her eyes surprisingly pulled at his heart. “I apologize, Isabel. I know this is difficult for you.”
“What you’re saying is impossible. Who would let a Vernonian chauffeur into the U.S. with a baby? Where would they get forged American documents? It’s just not possible.” She looked at the photograph as if trying to discover a secret hidden in it. “Uncle Frank wasn’t a chauffeur. He wasn’t a servant. He was a car mechanic from a little town outside Chicago. The town where he grew up with my mother. His little sister. He was like a father to me. Why would he lie to me about this?”
Niko respected the way she stood up for the man who raised her. Loyalty to one’s family was important and would serve her well. “Perhaps Franko, your Uncle Frank, withheld certain truths for your own protection. You were his princess. A faction in Vernonia would have tried to kill you if they’d known you lived.”
A faction that had been loyal to Niko’s father even if the king hadn’t approved of the group’s methods and violence.
“It’s