Ways To Ruin A Royal Reputation (Mills & Boon Modern) (Signed, Sealed…Seduced, Book 1) by Dani Collins (best ebook reader ubuntu .txt) 📗

resign. She would wait until Clare and Bea were back to tell them personally. For now, she focused on drafting a statement about her past and most recent disgrace.

It started out very remorseful, but the more she looked up statistics on sexual harassment and noted the delight trolls took in being sadistic toward women, and the punishment gap when a woman made a mistake versus a man, the more incensed she became.

She wound up writing:

How is it that a twenty-nine-year-old man was deemed to have more to lose than an eighteen-year-old woman?

Everyone had something to lose when this affair happened, but I—the person with the least life experience and fewest resources—became the scapegoat. I was expelled before I could take my A levels, destroying my university aspirations.

No one cared that my future was derailed. It was far more important to Avery’s mother, the headmistress, that she keep her job and avoid a disciplinary hearing over her son’s behavior. She convinced my parents to sweep it under the rug. They agreed because they had financial, social, and career pressures to protect.

Instead of urging me to call the police, which I was too humiliated to contemplate on my own, my parents cut me off financially. I was literally left homeless while Avery was immediately transferred to a position at another school.

What began as a PR spin became an essay on feminism and the distance that still needed to be traveled. When she was done, there was morning light outside.

Amy hit send to a senior editor of an old-school but well-respected newspaper in America, then hired bodyguards to escort her to her own flat.

“‘The king of Vallia hired me to assist with the Queen’s Foundation,’” Sofia read aloud from the same open letter that Luca was reading on his own tablet. “‘At the time of my professional engagement, we discussed extending my purview to other assignments, but those discussions were discontinued after we became personally involved.’”

Mio Dio, she knew how to gracefully pirouette with prose, Luca thought.

Perhaps Sofia was thinking it, too. He could feel her staring at him from her position at the opposite end of the table, prodding him for details on those halted discussions.

Luca and his twin had always breakfasted together if they were both in the palace, even after Luca took the throne. It allowed them to connect personally, but also discuss any political developments or other rising concerns. Luca had wanted Sofia to be in the know so she could seamlessly take over when the time came. She was keeping him equally well-informed as a courtesy. She certainly didn’t need him weighing in with advice or opinions. Vallia’s populace was adapting well to the changeover, seeming energized and eager for the new order.

Luca wished he could say the same. He was miserable.

While I regret the anguish King Luca must have suffered from the photos of us that emerged, I feel no remorse over the fact he was pressured into giving up the crown as a result of our affair. Men should be held to account when they cross a line.

“I like her,” Sofia mused.

Me too, Luca thought, heart so heavy in his chest it was compressed and thumping in rough, painful beats that echoed in the pit of his gut.

He reached the end where an editorial note stated that Avery Mason’s wife had recently retained an extremely pricey and ruthless divorce lawyer.

“Do you suppose that’s why she sold the story?” Sofia asked as she clicked off her tablet. “To pay for her divorce?”

“And bolster her petition for one,” Luca surmised. Perhaps she’d seen this as her only avenue for escaping her marriage. He couldn’t spare much thought or empathy for her, though. Not when she’d ruthlessly used Amy to achieve her own ends.

The way you did? his conscience derided.

“A rebuttal is being drafted,” Guillermo said, ever the helicopter guardian, hovering and batting away threats to his charges.

“Why?” Luca asked. “Do you not think men should suffer the consequences of their actions?”

“Signor.” It was one of Guillermo’s scolds that backpedaled even as his haughty demeanor reinforced his position. Luca Albizzi was never allowed to be seen as anything but faultless.

You were so convinced of your own perfection you had to hire someone to make you look bad.

“Guillermo, will you leave us please?” Sofia said.

Luca brought his focus back to his sister as Guillermo slipped away.

“I regret nothing,” he said, which felt like a lie, but he still waved a dismissing hand at his tablet. “This will pass.”

“Luca, I know,” Sofia said in a voice that sent a chill of foreboding through him. “About the night Papa died. I made Vincenzo tell me everything.” Vincenzo was the head of the palace’s legal department.

Luca looked away, instantly thrown back to that grim night. “I was trying to spare you, not hide it from you.”

“I know.” She rose and came down the length of the table to stand behind him.

He tensed, not wanting comfort. He resisted her touch when her narrow hands settled on his shoulders and she squeezed his set muscles.

“I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t tell me. That you’ve had to carry it alone.”

“What was the point in forcing one more ugly memory onto you?”

“I know, but I needed to understand. Something changed in you after that night. At first, I thought it was the pressure of having to ascend. That you were angry the crown hadn’t come to me, but it was more than that. I saw it more clearly when you were with Amy. She makes you happy, Luca, but you’re fighting that every step of the way. Why?”

“Because look what happens when men in positions of power follow their base instincts!” He waved at the tablet where Amy’s words were imprinted for the world to see. “Do you think that would have happened to her if she hadn’t been tied to me?”

He would have risen to pace, but she didn’t let him shrug her off. Her hands pressed him to stay in the chair as