Free A Great Prince: A Royal Bad Boy Romance by Brad Vance Page A

and unlike you, I’m interested in the welfare of my people, and…”
    Nikolas found it then, his own steel. “To hell with you. Listen to me. I am my people. I lived in poverty and filth, and I literally fought my way out. I’ve gone to bed hungry more nights than you can dream of. I know what it’s like to watch your family suffer for… nothing. For politics, for bullshit. I have more in common with my people than you’ll ever have with yours.”
    Francesca watched him raptly, as if something was changing in her, before The Mask rose again. “Okay, that’s fair.” She sighed. “Look. You don’t want this. I don’t want this. So there are two things that I need to figure out…”
    “Who wants it, and why. I’m not stupid, you know.”
    “Y-yes. Exactly.” She collected herself. Clearly, Niko thought, she was expecting to give me a lecture.
    Nikolas softened, seeing the vulnerability beneath the arrogance. She could be a bitch, but it was a defense. He changed his tone.
    “Listen. You know the players on your side. I know them on mine. We have to figure out where they intersect.”
    “I know where they intersect.” She pulled a set of photos out from her bodice. “Here.”
    Nikolas grinned. “That was a clever way to hide...” Then he looked at the pictures and his grin faded.
    “Those are the bodies of Danubian women, who died in a shipping container. A container headed for Dubai, where they were to be sold into sexual slavery.”
    “No,” he muttered. “János would never… he swore… he would punish…”
    “He used to forbid it,” she said with surprising gentleness. “When you were a boy. But not any more. Not for years. Pretty white girls in Middle Eastern kingdoms are worth more by the pound now than cocaine or heroin.”
    Nikolas stared at the pictures, forced himself to study the women’s faces. Someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, someone’s sweetheart.
    “They promise them jobs as secretaries, as waitresses, anything. Then they…”
    “I see what they do,” he cut her off. “I will… I will handle this. I will have them arrested and…”
    Nikolas faltered. Have who arrested? The power behind the throne? The man who put him there?
    He saw a Chinese vase on an end table. Some priceless antique, and how many had died, suffered, taxed to death so that some aristocrat could collect it, look at it once and forget it?
    “Fuck!” He picked the vase up and hurled it against the wall. Francesca jumped but said nothing.
    “My country is guilty, too,” she said. “The bankers, the financiers… they help your criminals launder their money. In fact, I am pretty sure my stepmother’s family is involved. But we can stop them, Nikolas.”
    Through his fog of anger, Nikolas realized this was the first time she’d called him by name.
    “We have something they need.”
    Nikolas nodded. “Legitimacy.”
    Francesca paused. “Yes, I was going to say a good public image, but… you’ve nailed it. Without us, they have nothing.”
    He narrowed his eyes as he looked at her. “You, you’re the People’s Princess, especially after that thing at the border, with the refugees.”
    “And you,” she smiled ever so slightly. “You’re the ‘Punk Prince.’ Your people love you.”
    “For the wrong reasons, I guess,” he said, looking away.
    “Well… why not give them a better reason?” She looked thoughtful. “You know Queen Elizabeth I?”
    “Not personally.”
    She laughed, and Nikolas felt odd – warm, as if making her laugh made him happy.
    “In her time, they spoke of good rulers as ‘great Princes,’ and she implied that she thought of herself that way. As if she was a king, not a queen. To remind the people that she was the ruler, the monarch, not a wife in waiting for a ‘true king.’ That she deserved the title because she ruled for her people, for their benefit.”
    “And is that what you ask?” Nikolas said quietly. “That I be a ‘great