Vicious Prince (Royal Elite #5)(81)

That’s why I married into status. I was lucky enough that the woman I wed wasn’t the woman my father originally had planned for me.

What Charlotte doesn’t know is, I saw her first at one of Father’s banquets. She was this cheerful soul who made me feel something other than the constant pressure of duty.

I’m the one who put it in Father’s head to arrange a marriage with her father, but since she had an elder sister, I was to marry her. I found a solution, a way around that once I noticed Céline’s abnormal interest in her father’s car. I approached her with a smile and encouraged her to follow her heart.

I didn’t have any doubt of failure, because Céline was adventurous, romantic, and very much in love. I only took that step knowing full well she’d agree. She did just that and eloped.

As a result of my carefully laid-out plan, I ended up with Charlotte.

At first, she hated me and thought I was too proud and arrogant — her words, not mine — and she didn’t quit reminding me of that fact. However, I didn’t give up, and eventually, my beautiful wife took the time to pause her judgmental opinions and stopped to see me. When she did, I finally had her.

Charlotte is the reason for my happiness. She’s the one person who’s able to make me think less about duty and more about life.

She is life.

Or rather, the centre of mine.

When the doctor said her health might not allow her to birth any children, I went against my family’s rules about procreation and told her I didn’t need them. Her health and life were more important to me than any foolish need to keep the Astor name alive.

When she became pregnant, she begged me to keep the baby. She said she wanted to give us both a miracle.

And she did. That’s how Ronan came to life.

Our first meeting with him was through a smile. I’ve never felt more proud than I did at the moment when I met my beautiful boy.

He and Charlotte are my life — even though I’m admittedly bad at showing it. I leaned on Charlotte’s emotive nature to get to him. I’m too stiff while she’s too out there, so her emotions reached him better.

However, I used to feel Ronan and I were connected, even though I didn’t talk much. He’d snuggle up to me and come tell me about all the dragons he killed in his video games. He’d ask me for things and complain that Lars was making him drink milk.

Then he stopped.

Just like that, my son stopped coming to me. He stopped talking to me about his dragons and his drinks and his friends.

He never stopped with Charlotte, though. I chalked that up to the fact that he always felt closer to her, and while it stung, I left him to his own devices.

Charlotte’s health took up all my time and attention, and I neglected Ronan because of it. I thought he was a grown-up and that he preferred Lars anyway. After all, Ronan talked to him more than he ever talked to me.

My wife told me he respected me as a father and I could get close to him if I tried, but I brushed her off. Perhaps I was scared he’d close himself off to me like I’d closed myself off to Father when he brought me a stepmother and a stepbrother only a year after my mother’s death.

I know how it feels to have a strained relationship with your father, and I didn’t want to repeat it with my son.

Before I knew it, Ronan was as tall as me and also as proud as me. He never divulged his true feelings and deflected all my questions.

After I heard Teal in the car, everything else fell into place. I recalled how Ronan wouldn’t join me for lunches when Eduard was around, but he’d stay if Charlotte was there. He was subtle about it, making sure no one noticed his discomfort. He laughed and joked as usual, but now I know he was proving he was okay.

He has been doing that since he was a boy. My son has been pretending he was fine since he was eight.

That was around the time he stopped coming to me.

I always thought the parties and the weed were to prove something, but I presumed it was his way to get out of the pressure. I never thought it was because I’d opened my house and my business to my son’s rapist.

Not only my son’s, but many other children’s.

Eduard has always been a bit irresponsible, but he worked hard when I told him to. He looked up to me, and he did as I ordered. He always had women hanging off his arm, but I should’ve known from the way he showed them off as prizes that they could be camouflage.

Eduard and Ronan are similar in hiding, in pretending, but I of all people shouldn’t have missed it.

I can blame it on my preoccupation with Charlotte’s illness, but that doesn’t, under any circumstances, forgive the fact that I let my son down.

He needed his father, and I didn’t give him one.

He needed Eduard away, and I brought him back in.

He needed someone to listen, and I wasn’t there.

If Charlotte finds out about this, she’ll sink so low in depression and there will be no saving her.

Like me, she’ll think she let her miracle down. She’ll blame herself for not seeing it sooner and will think she’s a horrible mother. She’s not. She was just sick. She’s sacrificing what’s possibly her last chance at treatment to be with Ronan because, as she told me, she can’t die without giving him the happiest memories.

Charlotte won’t know. I’ll be the one to fix it.

I’ll fix everything.