Read Online For Duty's Sake by Lucy Monroe - Free Book Online Page A

well as his family’s. But come tomorrow, or perhaps even tonight, the blackmailer would know that Angele was no longer a pony in this race.
    Her eyes flicked to the final envelope, the one that would ensure there would be no turning back. Though, really, it was only symbolic. It held a press release,scotching any “rumors” of a suspected permanent connection between the house of Jawhar and the house of Zohra vis-à-vis a marriage between her and Zahir. She had included a couple of personal quotes. One to the effect that she had no desire to live her life in the public eye as a royal and the other her absolute refusal to make a permanent home outside of her adopted country, America.
    After reading it, her father might disown her and her mother would undoubtedly be furious, but Angele wasn’t going to live the rest of her life without love. She just wasn’t.
    She might not be American by birth, but she’d been raised around an entirely different set of ideals to the duty-bound royals that led Jawhar and Zohra. While she loved the country of her birth and Zohra as well, at heart? She was a modern American woman.
    She wasn’t about to allow Zahir to be forced into a marriage he so clearly had never really wanted, either.
    She was under no illusions. He would probably enter another arranged contract, but this time he was older. Zahir would have more input into who his chosen bride was to be. Angele could only hope, for his sake, that it was someone he could develop real feelings for.
    She snuck down the secret passageways for the last time and left Zahir’s packet in his room while she knew he was busy with his father. She left each of the letters to the kings with their respective secretarial staff. And finally she dropped the press release off with the PR department.
    She had prepared a timed email with a duplicate release to be sent to the major news distribution agenciesin a few hours. She would be in flight back to the United States when news hit.
    Cowardly? Perhaps, but she preferred to think of it as politic.
    Back in the U.S., her denial of a connection to the House of Zohra would constitute little more than a blip in the plethora of social news about drunk-driving celebrities and irresponsible megaconglomerates destroying ecosystems.
    Once she was in the car headed to the airport, she pulled out her phone to make the most difficult call of her life. Her parents would not be pleased.
    Refusing to take the easy route, she called her father first. That conversation went much as expected, but when he blamed her mother for insisting Angele be raised in the United States, she’d had enough.
    â€œHad you managed to keep it in your pants, I would have grown up in Jawhar. Don’t you dare blame Mom for this.”
    His outraged gasp at her crassness had no problem translating across the cellular connection.
    â€œIn point of fact, it was your ongoing infidelity that convinced me marriage to Zahir would never work,” Angele added. “I will not put myself in the position of living as Mom did.”
    â€œShe never wanted for anything.”
    â€œIf you really believe that, then you’ve learned nothing despite your change in behavior.”
    â€œYou do not speak to me with such disrespect, Angele.”
    â€œThe truth is not disrespect.” He couldn’t even accuseher of a snarky tone, because her voice was as devoid of emotion as her heart right now.
    She preferred the dead feeling to the pain that was sure to come as her final separation from Zahir sank in completely.
    â€œYour mother and my relationship is not your business.”
    â€œI agree, but that does not change the fact that your example is one I absolutely refuse to follow.”
    â€œZahir is not a hot-blooded man.” The words like myself were implied but not said.
    Angele wasn’t about to tell her father just how wrong he was. After the previous night, though, Angele knew the truth. And