Royalty in Death - an In Death series fanfic (J.D. Robb)

Chapter 8

"Want to play as a civilian consultant, Ace?"

"Huh?" Roarke managed to say while recovering from their previous orgasms. She was lying on top of him, trying to regulate her breathing.

"Is this your bribery? Now I feel used."

"You're too good for my plaything, pal," she answered with a smug.

After they dressed, they went to her office for some dinner, and there she told him everything.

"So to summarize, our princess has threats unreported upon her arrival and escalated when the consul died on the same hotel that she stayed. You want my take if it sounds like a total bluff? No, it's not.", he said, then took a bite of his steak.

"Harmin made its independence a decade ago, still on the shaky ground, has a left and right wings, and barely holding its position as a Third World country. With some remnants from the Urban Wars, political assassinations are quite rampant around Asia and Pacific regions. And for a fragile country to survive from its borders, America is your greatest ally. But sometimes, a treaty is not enough."

"And that's how the marriage entered.", she concluded, "Who's this Stephanos Levinski, by the way?"

"Ah, a pompous third-generation moniker born with a pea-sized brain and a fucked-up attitude."

"You sound like you don't like this guy, Roarke."

"I bloody well don't."

Eve raised her brow on that comment. She has seen different sides of him – the Scary Roarke, the Serious Roarke, the Playful Roarke – and this one was the rarest.

"What did Levinski do? Did he conned you – hey!", she gawked when he left the table, only to retrieve his PPC and punched something on the keys before handing it to her. As she flipped the details, she paused and stared at the visual image.

"Holy shit! Is this the Levinski who will marry the princess?"

According to the data, his grandfather was a senator while his father was a governor, a Harvard graduate with flying colors, made a name in the business world, and similar as Roarke, he was a billionaire with properties on and off-planet. These were just salient anyways, so nothing popped out, and probably she would grasp a bigger picture if she will run it using the Central's database.

But what surprised her the most were his unattractive looks. She was not very particular about it, but his features were quite alarming. He looked like twice as his age, with deformed teeth, crooked nose, creased forehead, and saggy eye bags. She verified his medical records twice for abnormalities, but all test results showed as normal.

"It's now clear as the sun why she's marrying him, but for a man with the same stature as you, he could've done some enhancement on his face. Geez, even a sidewalk-sleeper is more handsome than him. No cosmetic surgeries, no trauma or accidents. What does he have, a huge ego?"

"I could have divorced you for associating his name with mine, but you're right, he has a very huge ego and he's proud of it. He doesn't know what respect means, even he foul-mouthed his own parents and colleagues alike."

"And something happened between the two of you"

He made a non-committal hum "His face was all over the screens lately, attaching the news of his upcoming marriage."

"You know that I'm not fond of watching entertainment news."

He's stalling, she thought, that he never answered her question. Something did happen between him and Levinski, but she didn't probe further.