Darling met Maris’s gaze, wanting his friend’s blessing for what he was about to do. “If anyone should understand this, it’s you, Mari.”
Maris scoffed. “Yes, but I fall in love every five minutes and within twenty I’ve moved on to the next. You cannot marry a woman. You know that. Just imagine the scandal that’ll cause.”
“Mari—”
“Don’t Mari me… in more ways than one. Do you remember what you said when I was about to walk down the aisle and make the biggest mistake of my life?”
“Your pants were too tight?”
Maris rolled his eyes. “After that.”
“That you were sweating so badly you needed another shower or else you’d drown your bride?”
Maris actually growled at him this time. “I’m being serious, Darling. Damn it! Stop being impossible.”
Darling’s eyes widened at the unexpected profanity. “Wow… Damn it. Really? I didn’t know you knew how to cuss. I’m impressed.”
“What can I say?” He crossed his arms in irritation. “You’ve ruined me. And—”
“I hear everything you’re saying.” Darling cut him off before he repeated the same argument he’d been making for the last thirty minutes. “I do. But my uncle has already tried to kill me. You were there. Remember?” Not wanting to completely alienate his best friend, he tempered the sarcasm. “In eighteen months, I’ll be old enough to legally dethrone him and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. He knows that, and it’s now open season on my ass. If I don’t do something fast, you’ll be visiting me in the family vault, beside my father.” Darling swallowed as that pain washed over him. He’d give anything to have his father back.
But that desire changed nothing. His father was dead and he didn’t really want to join him there.
Not today, anyway.
“We both know Arturo’s not about to go blithely into retirement. Not while I have a younger brother who can inherit the throne after me. He kills me and then he moves his guardianship to Drakari for the next six years. Or worse, the bastard locks me up in another institution and has both me and Drake permanently declared insane so that he can rule in our names without being contested.”
Darling didn’t even want to think about what had happened to him the last time he’d been locked away. The pain and degradation. The never-ending meds that had left him so sick, weak, and disoriented, he could barely move. It’d taken months to detox and get that shit out of his system.
Another confinement would make him crazy. He had no doubt whatsoever. He couldn’t stand being strapped down and helpless, locked in a single room where he was put on display and sold like some freak of nature for the amusement of others. It didn’t pay to be a high-ranking aristo in that situation. Ever.
And he couldn’t even bear to think about the other things they’d done to him. Things he’d never mentioned to anyone, hoping that if he kept it to himself, then the memories would go away and leave him alone. But it didn’t work that way.
Those scars ran all the way to his battered soul. And those waking nightmares were never far away. Anytime he let his guard down, they returned to torture him all over again.
The last thing he wanted was for his brother to be put in the same situation. While Drakari was strong, he’d never been tested like that, and Darling didn’t want him to be. For the most part, Drake was untouched by the ruthless violence that had been Darling’s life since the day they’d buried their father. And that, too, had cost Darling dearly. He’d made sure that both Drake and Annalise had been raised in foreign boarding schools.
His greatest accomplishment was that they were both relatively unscathed by their uncle’s hatred.
But if Darling was gone…
“Who will protect my family if I’m not here? Have you forgotten what happened to my mother the last time I was locked up?”
Maris looked away, but not before Darling saw the involuntary wince over it. “I’ve not forgotten. How could I?”
In a vicious show of power and intimidation, his uncle had ordered his mother brutally beaten by so-called intruders within hours of Darling being admitted into a mental ward. Her assault had been his uncle’s way of letting him know what happened to his family when he didn’t fall in line with his uncle’s wishes.
And it was one seared into his heart and mind. While he might not like his mother, he didn’t want her harmed in any way. He refused to have his family hurt because of something he did.
More than that, Arturo had made it abundantly clear that next time, Annalise might be the one an intruder broke in on.
I’ll kill him if he goes after her. Since the day she’d been born, his sister had held a special place in his heart. Even though she annoyed him to extreme distraction, he adored her.
But killing anyone who dared touch Lise wouldn’t undo the mental damage such an attack would cause his headstrong sister. Darling knew that better than anyone.