The Future King’s Love-Child Read Online Free Page B

tomorrow…

CHAPTER THREE
    S AM’S little hand suddenly clutched at the front of Cassie’s uniform, his eyes huge in his stricken face. ‘You’re c-coming back again, aren’t you, Mummy?’
    Cassie squatted down to his level and looked deep into his troubled gaze. ‘Yes, sweetie, of course I am.’
    His expression was still white with worry. ‘You’re not g-going to be locked away like before, are you?’
    Cassie suppressed a frown as she hugged him close. She had always tried to be as honest with him as possible without distressing him with details too difficult for him to understand. After all, it seemed pointless pretending the fifteen-foot-high barbed wire and concrete enclosure of the Aristo prison was some sort of luxury accommodation, but she had never gone into the sordid details of why she had had to be housed there. But it made her wonder who had been talking to him about her past and why. He was only just fiveyears old. Apart from her flatmate and close friend, Angelica, he was with her all the time at the orphanage. But it was clear someone had said something to him, or perhaps he had overheard some staff members talking.
    ‘Baby, that was a long time ago and it’s never going to happen again, I promise you with all my heart,’ she said, holding him gently by his thin little shoulders. ‘I am never going to be separated from you again. Never .’
    Sam’s chin wobbled slightly and his stammer continued in spite of his effort to control it. ‘I heard Spiro t-talking to one of the carers,’ he said. ‘He said you k-killed my grandfather, and that you said it was an accident, but no one believed you.’
    Cassie bit down on her bottom lip. She had naively hoped this conversation was several years away, but the gardener at the orphanage had never liked her since she had spurned his advances a few months ago. But that he would discuss her past with one of the children’s carers was reprehensible to say the least. She loved her job. She needed her job. It wasn’t just the money—the wage was hardly what anyone would call lucrative; it was the fact that for once in her life she was able to give something back to those in need. She had misspent her youth, wasted so many precious years being seen at the right parties with the rightpeople, turning into a glamorous coat hanger for the ‘right’ clothes, mouthing the vacuous words that marked her as a shallow socialite looking for a good time.
    The more her prestige-conscious and controlling father had protested, the more outrageous she had become. Cassie hadn’t needed the prison psychologist to tell her why she had behaved the way she had. She had known it from the very first time she had realised what her birthday represented. It was certainly not a date to be celebrated, but she hadn’t realised the sick irony of it until she had faced the judge and jury.
    Cassandra Kyriakis had not just killed her father, but on the day she had come into the world she had taken her mother’s life as well.
    Cassie hugged Sam close to her chest, breathing in the small-child scent of him, her heart swelling with overwhelming love. ‘We’ll talk about this when I get back and Mummy will explain everything. I won’t be away long, my precious,’ she said. ‘I’m just having a quick lunch with…with a friend.’
    Sam eased back in her hold to look up at her. ‘Who with, Mummy? Have I met them?’ he asked.
    Cassie shook her head and gently ruffled the black silk of his hair. ‘No, you have never methim,’ she said, her heart aching at the thought of her little boy never knowing his father. She had never known her mother and often wondered if her life would have been different for her if she had.
    ‘He’s a very important person on Aristo,’ she added. ‘He is soon to be the king.’
    Sam’s eyes were like wide black pools. ‘Can I give you a picture to take for him to hang at his palace?’ he said. ‘Do you think he would like that?’
    She smiled at him