I walked downstairs and found her father sitting in a chair by the window, reading. He looked up, arching a brow.
I shook my head. “She asked me to leave, said there was nothing left to say.”
He sighed. “She is stubborn, my Solange.”
“Maybe she’s right. Maybe she’s better off without me.”
“You believe this?” He met my gaze directly.
“No, but she seemed sure and I screwed up pretty bad.”
“You can fix this, but you must be patient. She needs time. Much has happened. She was frightened, and you left her.”
“I know. I fucking know.” I said that last part under my breath but he heard it and smiled.
“Do you think this is forever?” he asked. “Do you love Solange? With all your heart? And want to marry her and take care of her? Think carefully before you answer.”
I didn’t need to think carefully; I already knew the answer. “I do.”
“Then you cannot give up. Try, again and again, until she listens.”
“Do I have your blessing to ask her to marry me?” I’d never dreamed I’d be proposing, and I’d definitely never imagined asking a woman’s father for her hand or whatever the fuck this was called, but here I was. What the fuck was happening?
He smiled. “When she changes her mind, yes, I will give blessing.”
“Thank you.” I turned to go but he called out to me.
“Axel?”
“Yes?”
“You take care of Kostya also, yes? He will be your brother one day—you must help him.”
I grunted. “I will.”
The next few weeks at the palace were quiet. Too quiet. Logan had been the mischief-maker, the guy always dragging us outside for an impromptu archery competition or snowmobile racing or setting booby traps during meetings. Without him, we were all kind of floundering. On top of that, Natalia left the day before yesterday, sent off to Iraq to be embedded with a Marines Force Recon unit in exchange for one of their men. Except that man’s father died and he’d been granted emergency leave for a week, to be with his family, and now we were down two Protectors.
Lennox was still struggling with horrible morning sickness so it was almost like being down three, though she’d taken over duty as Casey’s bodyguard, which didn’t require much physical effort. Joe was no longer in a supervisory role and was on the active duty roster as a Royal Protector, and even Daniil, who was technically the Minister of Defense in Parliament, would have to be put on the duty roster until we figured this out.
Jonas was frustrated as well, because though he longed to be on the duty roster, and he was to an extent, he was busier than ever trying to make sure what had happened at the school never happened again. Though Solange had shut down the system before anyone actually got in, and the system itself was fairly secure, now that the Brat knew it existed, the system—and physical security as well—had to be tighter than ever.
“I have the financial means to hire the best hackers in the world,” Erik said at our briefing a few weeks after I’d last seen Solange. “The issue, as always, is trust. Those kinds of people often sell out to the highest bidder, and that’s not something I can afford to risk. I’d rather have people that we train from the ground up, like Natalia, but we trust implicitly. Which brings us back to the main topic—bringing more people on to the team and where to find them.”
“Very few people we trust implicitly have the training and qualifications to be a Royal Protector,” Joe said.
“Most of them aren’t trained to be in the field,” Sandor corrected him quietly. “I think where we’re going with this is creating a division of Protectors that aren’t in the field. Like CIA analysts who never leave the office. They ride a desk but the information they find and analyze is invaluable. Having someone like Solange here overseeing the computers and cybersecurity means Jonas can be in the field more.”
“Good luck making that happen,” Xander muttered. “She wants nothing to do with any of us.”
Erik sighed. “I feel like shit about that. Do you think it would help if I reached out?”
He shrugged. “It might, but I don’t know. She’s gone cold, icy, frigid like Siberia in January during a blizzard.”
I grimaced, though I kept my mouth shut. Unfortunately, everyone turned to look at me.
“Don’t,” I warned. “It was her choice, not mine.”
Xander rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you fucking went over there and tried to talk to her. When she told you to leave, you left.”
“What was I supposed to do?” I demanded, scowling at him.
“If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.” Xander looked pissed too, which pissed me off even more.
Sandor interrupted our little pissing contest. “I don’t know for sure if what happened to Logan would have happened if we’d had more people on the team, but the way things are now, everyone is stretched too thin. Lennox is pregnant, and while she can continue to guard Casey and the baby right now, by early next year she’s going to be physically unable to continue. Which means moving her into a supervisory position, taking over Joe’s job until she gives birth, and again, that’s a temporary fix because she can and will take maternity leave—” He held up a hand when Lennox started to protest. “Don’t even try, Lennox. I’ll fire your ass if you don’t take time with the new baby.”
She laughed. “I was just going to say that even on maternity leave, I can be counted on in an emergency, but yes, of course I’m taking leave when the baby comes.”
“We need Solange or someone like her,” Joe said. “Someone that can handle stuff like cybersecurity so Jonas is free to do other things.”
“This is a pointless conversation,” Erik interjected, “unless and until we have options. Any actual suggestions of specific people we can either hire, train and/or approach about those things?”
“I have a friend,” Lennox said thoughtfully. “Many of you met her at our wedding. She was kind of quiet and kept to herself. Courtney? We were supposed to chat at some point, but never got the chance and then she jumped on the jet when the first group left to go back to the U.S. She’s younger than me, she was getting in as I was getting out, but I think she’d be a great fit around here depending on how much longer she has in the military. I can reach out.”
“If you get me her info, I can do a preliminary background check,” Joe said, “so we don’t waste our time in case there are any red flags, but yeah, reach out.”
“She’s a helicopter pilot,” she said, “which is a skill none of the other Protectors have.”
“You think she’s someone willing to drop everything to come here?” Erik asked. “Aside from the trust issue, that’s the biggest issue we’ve run into. Once you take the oath, you’ve committed yourself to me, my family and my country. Days off are rare, vacations are rarer, and it’s pretty much all you do. Make sure you spell all that out before you even mention bringing her on board.”
Lennox nodded. “Absolutely. She might be a good fit because she’s alone. Parents dead, raised by a grandmother who’s also gone now. She joined the military because that was the only way she’d be able to afford college, but she’s done well with herself, moved up quickly. I’ll be sure to mention the sacrifice…”