Girl of Vengeance Read Free

cry. This is one of the happiest moments of my life. I want it to be the same for you.”
    Andrea began to shake, violently, and she sobbed, unable to contain the tears. George-Phillip pulled her to him and put his arms around her. Andrea stayed still, arms at her sides, but she couldn’t contain her crying. She sobbed, loudly, the pent up terrible grief of a lifetime of hurt. George-Phillip murmured some meaningless sounds, and Jane put her arms around Andrea’s right leg.
    “Why are you sad?” Jane asked.
    That just caused Andrea to sob more. Finally, she managed to compose a meaningful sound, a single word that rang out in the room with far more weight than he would have guessed possible.
    “Why?”
    After she said the word, she pushed back against the Prince’s chest, forcing him to release her. Fiercely, she wiped her face with the sleeve of the George Mason University sweatshirt they had bought—what … two days ago? Dylan couldn’t keep track any more.
    “Andrea … my daughter.” As he said the word daughter , Prince George-Phillips eyebrows seemed to do a solo dance, rising high up on his forehead. Hard to imagine, Dylan thought, that a man with no poker face at all could survive as the Chief of Intelligence of a large country.
    George-Phillip continued. “Are you asking why I’m your father? Or why you never knew about it?”
    “All of it,” Andrea demanded. “I want to know everything. I want to know why I was dumped off in another country and never knew either of my parents. I want to know why … why…”
    She paused, trying to compose her face, then said, “I want to know why I was left to believe I wasn’t worth loving.”
    George-Phillip looked somber. Dylan was usually a pretty good judge of people. There was no question in his mind that the Prince was sincere. Men didn’t get that close to crying unless they were devastated.
    “I’m so very sorry, Andrea. It breaks my heart that you didn’t grow up feeling loved.”
    “You already broke mine,” she responded.
    George-Phillip sagged. “Indeed. And Carrie’s, I suppose.”
    “My mother would never have been…” She whispered, “…beaten and raped if she hadn’t gotten pregnant with Carrie. It was your fault.”
    “That happened first nine months before Julia was born,” he replied in a sad voice.
    Andrea closed her eyes. “They met in Spain. When she was eighteen. You’re telling me he forced her then?”
    George-Phillip sighed and said, “I’m deeply sorry to be telling you this, Andrea. It happened when she was sixteen. And her father died a few weeks later.”
    “I don’t … why did she marry him?”
    “She was forced, Andrea. By her priest and her mother. Those days, things were different, especially in Spain.”
    Andrea shook her head forcefully. “No. Abuelita ? Not possible. She would never force her daughter to marry a rapist.” She hissed the next word. “ Never.”
    Dylan hoped Andrea wouldn’t piss off Prince George-Phillip to the point where they were forced to leave. He didn’t know what kind of legal limbo they were in—would they be arrested the moment they left the Embassy? For that matter, the police probably didn’t know where they were.
    He didn’t think George-Phillip would do that. But neither of them really knew him, did they? And he was the head of the British intelligence agency. You didn’t get to that kind of high-level position without the ability to make some cold-hearted decisions.
    Prince George-Phillip remained patient. He said, “I know there is much you don’t know, Andrea, and much that you have every right to be angry about. I’d like to tell you as much as possible, if you’ll let me.”
    With a quick, firm nod, she said, “Yes. Fine. And I am hungry. Wrestling with your guards is a lot of work.”
    “Come, then. Both of you. Jane, go wash your hands, and you may join us in the sunroom.”
    Prince George-Phillip showed them where they could clean up—the water-closet