She reached for her. She took her hand.
“When I left...before...” Sofia was whispering. She didn’t know why. Roman was in the next room, but she didn’t fear him. “You had Mateo back. You had Roxanne.” It was a wonder she could hear her at all. “You didn’t need me anymore.”
When Sofia had taken Carmen Louisa’s hand, she thought she was doing it as her princesa. But when Carmen Louisa gripped it back, she knew she needed the sure handhold of the best mother she ever had.
“We weren’t going to continue tormenting our young princesa, with her own hopes and aspirations, with our problems. But while your brother has planted the seeds, you’re the light that helps us grow.”
“Mi estrella,” Aish had groaned in the lamplight against her skin, almost fully clothed yet indescribably naked for her. “So strong and bright...”
No. No. No, regardless of the career he said he would sacrifice.
“But...” She flapped her hand at the village lights seen through Roman’s living room window. “This mess. It’s all my fault.”
“And would you have said success was all your doing?”
“Of course not,” she said instantly.
“Then how can one be true and not the other?”
Carmen Louisa was better than any soul alive at leaving her without a response. The grower stared with soft, hopeful eyes. “Stay, princesa,” she said. “Fight.”
“He’s staying and fighting and that’s the last thing I expected from him,” Henry had said about Aish. “And you’re stronger and warmer when he’s around. That’s the last thing I expected from you.”
Both women jumped when a heavy hand pounded at the door. Roman poked his head out of the kitchen doorway—looking for the all clear from them—before striding across the living room.
“¿Qué pasa?” Carmen Louisa asked in wonder as the fist continued to pound.
What now?
Roman opened the door and Henry pushed past him, leading a pale-faced Queen Valentina into the room.
Her mother wasn’t wearing makeup. Her mother always wore makeup. It startled Sofia enough that she said, “Reina,” urgently, stopping her mother short. She never called her queen.
They stood and stared at each other. “What’s happened?” Sofia finally asked.
The queen put her hand over her heart—she was out of the castle in her exercise clothes, a tank top and yoga pants, her platinum hair in a haphazard ponytail—and although she opened her mouth, nothing came out. Her dishevelment, the fear in her eyes, her inability to say one cutting word, had Sofia gripping her hands into fists. “What’s happened?” she demanded again.
“Mi hija,” the queen finally choked out in Spanish. “He’s taken Aish.”
Sofia understood the words individually. Together, they made no sense. “What?”
“He... John. John is alive. He’s kidnapped Aish. I don’t know where he’s taken him.”
Sofia suddenly found herself sitting back down on the couch. She saw Henry and Carmen Louisa rushing toward her. But her mother got to her first.
Her mother was down on a knee in front of her, a steadying hand on her arm, another on her leg. “Mi hija, I’m so sorry. I had no idea he would go this far.”
Sofia stared into her mother’s face as Carmen Louisa translated for Roman and Henry everything her mother just said. An unplugged part of herself noted that she’d never had her mother’s undivided attention this way before.
“When?” Roman barked.
“She thinks in the last couple of hours,” Henry said, all trace of her good-times-and-brewskis friend gone as he relayed the details, as daunting as Roman at his most soldierly. “The family is at the castle; they’re on lockdown. God only knows what else this asshole is gonna pull. Security has already started searching the hospedería. Manon snatched a rental car and left an hour ago.”
“Manon?” Carmen Louisa gasped.
Sofia turned chilling eyes back on her mother. “What did you do?” she asked.
Sofia suddenly realized that everything she’d lost in the last twenty-four hours might only be a drop of what she could potentially lose.
Her mother’s eyes were naked wounds on her face. But she lifted her chin and took her hands off Sofia. She folded them in front of her like she didn’t have the right to touch her daughter. “I didn’t instigate it. Juan Carlos came to me. He wanted to stop you. He said it was for the good of the Monte. I wanted to stop you because...because you are everything I can never be.” Sofia was stunned to watch her mother struggle to swallow her tears. Tears were usually her best weapon. “Juan Carlos didn’t recognize John when he approached him. He’s had—” she waved her hand in front of her face “—work. But he said he would help us if we gave him information, access. He had one of your interns under his thumb before she arrived.”
“Manon broke into your room the night of the party and stole the drive,” Henry said. Then he shook his head, his bone-crushing hands on his hips. “That whole fucking break-in at the winery was just a diversion. They wanted to minimize the security at the castle so she could sneak through without gettin’ caught.”
“Dios mío,” Carmen Louisa said, her eyes stricken. “I’d taken her on a tour of the castle earlier in the week.”
“You didn’t know,” Sofia replied commandingly as she looked at them both. She refused to have one more person feel guilty in all of this. “How could any of us have known?”
Manon. Manon had been working with John, sharing detailed information of the internship with the press, using her media experience and contacts to spin everything and make it reflect negatively on them.
“How did they know about the drive?” Sofia asked her mother.
The queen settled back on her heels, crossed her arms over herself as she looked away. “I like spending time in your room. I like to imagine brushing your hair as you tell me about your day. Sometimes I pretend I’m Roxanne or her—” she sniffed at Carmen Louisa “—when the idea that my own daughter would talk to me seems too farfetched for imagination.” She shrugged and dropped her gaze to
