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It's the tiny quaver that has me turning around to see my wife. Tanzi is blinking back tears and looking too damn vulnerable.
Ignoring the people behind me, I reach for her. "All will be well,dolce bella. We knew this moment was coming."
We just didn't expect it this quickly.
"Don't make my daughter promises you may not be able to keep," Miguel threatens.
My arms firmly around my trembling wife, I turn back to her parents. "Any promise I make to your daughter I will honor; all vows I have made to her are permanent."
Some of the fury in Miguel's eyes banks and I realize the man had been worriedforhis daughter. But why?
"You two need to get dressed immediately," he says, his tone only marginally more civil. "I convinced your father to allow me to collect you, but you are facing a storm of epic proportions when we reach the palace. I will not allow my daughter to be hit by its lightning. You understand me?"
"Palace?" Tanzi asks. She tips her head back to meet my eyes. "Rio, what is my dad talking about?"
Miguel replies before I can. "Tanzi, meet your husband. Principe Vittorio Micheli Scorsolini."
"You're a prince?" she asks in shock.
"And you are a billionaire's daughter." My brain is firing on all cylinders and I recognize Miguel Menendez from the financial news.
Incredibly, she blushes. "Um, yeah about that."
I shake my head. "No. It doesn't matter. I fell in love with you, Tanzi Scorsolini." I use her new last name on purpose, to drill home to her family that she is mine now. "And you fell in love with me, not my title."
"But you're a prince?"
"Heir to the throne of Isole dei Re," her father answers again.
Earning a blistering look from me. "I'm capable of speaking for myself."
"Really? Then why is it that my daughter is not aware that one day she will be queen?" Miguel looked at Tanzi, one brow raised. "And you had issues with taking over my company."
The temptation to clock the billionaire has my hands clenching into fists.
"Don't," Tanzi said softly.
I smile down at her.
"Of course not and you won't be queen." I glare at her father again. "I am third in line to the throne.Anheir, nottheheir. That would be my sister, Elena."
"But the news said—"
"Don't," Tanzi's mother says with enough force her son stops speaking.
His meaning is clear though. Somehow, our elopement is already public knowledge. The curses running through my brain are not nice.
I focus onmi amateagain. "I was going to tell you, before—"
"Before you found out I was pregnant withyourheir?" she asks with a rueful smile.
Her mother gasps. Her father lets loose some creative invective in Spanish.
Tanzi ignores them both. "Before you whisked me off to marry you so no one, not even a king, could stop us?"
She understands. Relief flows through me in a near debilitating wave. "Sì. I was going to tell you everything today."
"You do not think you should have told her before you married her?" Miguel demands.
