Ethan & Anda (Royals of Valleria #11) Read online

  Ethan & Anda (Royals of Valleria #11)

  Marianne Knightly

  Contents

  Also by Marianne Knightly

  Synopsis

  1. Now

  2. Then

  3. Now

  4. Then

  5. Now

  6. Then

  7. Now

  8. Then

  9. Now

  10. Then

  11. Now

  12. Then

  13. Now

  14. Now

  15. Now

  Epilogue

  A Note from the Author

  About the Author

  Other Books by Marianne Knightly

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Marianne Knightly

  Sign up for Marianne’s newsletter for exclusive news about sales and releases!

  Seaside Valleria Series

  Book 1: Rush (Hector & Millie)

  Book 2: Ripple (Persy & Sully)

  Book 3: Raw (Frannie & Aiden)

  Book 4: (Beth & Everett)

  Book 5: (Liz & Luke)

  Box Set: (Full Series, Books 1-5)

  Royals of Valleria Series

  Book 1: Alexander & Rebecca

  Book 2: Marcello & Grace

  Book 3: Arianna & Finn

  Book 4: Charlotte & Nate

  Book 5: A Royal Holiday (Novella)

  Book 6: Catharine & Edward

  Book 7: Royally Ever After

  Book 8: Lorenzo & Lily

  Book 9: Sarah & Vittorio

  Book 10: Permanently Princess (Novella)

  Book 11: Ethan & Anda

  Box Set: Books 1-3

  Box Set: Books 4-6

  Box Set: Books 7-9

  Royals of Valleria Short Stories (exclusively for e-newsletter subscribers)

  Story 1: Delusional (featuring Alexander & Rebecca)

  Story 2: (coming soon)

  The Italian Shipping Millionaires Series

  Book 1: Dante

  Book 2: Adrian

  Book 3: Giovanni

  Book 4: Luc

  Box Set: Books 1-4

  Copyright © 2019 Marianne Knightly

  You deserve a love so big.

  You deserve to know you’re worthy for just who are. You deserve a hug at the end of a long day, and a kiss at the beginning of a long night. You deserve all that and more.

  YOU ARE WORTHY. YOU ARE LOVED.

  Don’t forget it.

  Synopsis

  Not all royal secrets were meant to be revealed…

  Captain Ethan Santoro, youngest son of Valleria’s king and doctor in the Navy, has kept a lot of secrets. There was the time he officiated his brother’s elopement—his mother still hasn’t forgiven him for that—and all the many secrets he’s kept for his royal siblings. Keeping secrets, however, has its price.

  He just didn’t think that price would be blood, namely his. All to protect the one woman he should stay away from, Anda Salamanca. The only woman who knows his secret, which, if revealed, could divide his royal family.

  But he’s not the only one with a secret…he knows hers, too, and he’ll risk death to keep it.

  She might never survive the royal spotlight if they got together again (neither will he at this rate). She might never survive his family (especially if they learn the truth). She might never fall in love with him again either…Or will she?

  If they can both survive the onslaught, they might just have a chance, as long as no one gets caught in the crossfire. This time, they’re not only fighting for their lives, but for each other.

  It’s safe to say this isn’t your typical prince and a movie star romance. No, nothing about them is typical at all. Yet, as he’ll soon discover, she’s worth the threat of death and of danger.

  Because she’s worth everything.

  A second chance prince and a movie star romance.

  Welcome to Valleria, a country as old as the fall of the Roman Empire. The reigning king and patriarch rules with his beloved queen. Nine children, now grown, ranging from the eldest twins to the youngest son, watch over the country they love and care for. Bound by honor, duty, and loyalty, follow their lives as they fall in love, face tragedies, and triumph against the evils facing them.

  1

  Now

  Present day…

  Grand Valentia Theatre & Ballroom

  Valentia, Valleria

  What the fuck was she doing here?

  Prince Ethan Santoro glared at the woman standing on stage.

  He rolled his shoulders and adjusted the tie of his impeccable suit, before slowly making his way towards her as discreetly as possible. Hard to do as a prince, even an insignificant one like him—the ninth and youngest child of the King and Queen.

  He wished he were wearing his Navy uniform. As a Captain and doctor in the Vallerian Royal Navy, he always felt confident, assured, and ready for action in his uniform or doctor’s scrubs.

  In this suit, with that woman on the stage, he felt completely unprepared.

  He glanced casually around for his siblings or parents, but they were busy on the other side of the ballroom. It was a charity auction, and the money this event would bring in for the local children’s hospital was astronomical, so they were no doubt schmoozing everyone in the room. Ethan had been ‘lounging’—aka hiding—in a corner since he’d never been as comfortable as the rest of his family with that sort of thing.

  He wove through tables, smiling and nodding at this Royal Council member or that member of Vallerian high society. He spent months on a ship, assigned to his tiny medical bay, yet he felt confined in a large ballroom.

  He turned his attention back to the stage. She was smiling, her eyes focused on the room, assessing, analyzing. Those eyes had done that to him quite a lot once upon a time. She hadn’t noticed him yet, but he would never be able to keep from noticing her. She was like a magnet pulling him towards her, no matter the room or situation. Even now, even after everything and the distance of the last few months, his body still recognized her pull. And, oh, what a body it was.

  She was elegant in a long, thin-strapped dress made of shimmering silver with streaks of Vallerian purple, her olive-hued skin flawless, her inky black hair set in swirls and curls in the style of a movie starlet from years past.

  She was stunning.

  She was also definitely not a movie star—or not only a movie star. He knew exactly what she was, who she really was, and he knew, with absolute certainty, that her presence meant something bad, horrible, terrible was likely to happen.

  Shit.

  He weaved closer, deciding the least conspicuous way to approach her was from the backstage area. All of Valleria’s power players were gathered near the front of the ballroom, watching, waiting, leering at the last celebrity up for auction. She was alone on the stage while the evening’s master of ceremonies walked through the crowd encouraging higher bids.

  When the stage had been full at the start of the evening, she’d blended in with the best of them. It was her job, after all, to do so—her other job, not her job as an actress—but she’d still shone like a beacon to him.

  What the hell was she doing here? And were they all safe?

  Suddenly, the ground shuddered beneath him, beneath all of them.

  The tables shook, the glassware tumbled and shattered.

  The men stumbled like drunkards. The women tottered on heels and started screaming.

  But not her.

  No, not her. On stage, she’d dropped to one knee, her hands flat on the stage, like a runner about to race. Her keen eyes assessed the room, then widened as they locked on him.

  Moments, minutes they stared
, a thousand thoughts left unsaid between them, and fear that both their secrets would be revealed tonight.

  Another scream, this one he knew.

  Catharine!

  His head whipped around to the sound of his sister, to the cluster of royals being ushered out by Royal Protection agents, Cat’s fiancé, Eddie, at the lead. His family, on their way to safety.

  He counted, miscounted, cursed, and counted again. They were all there, everyone who’d come tonight. They were safe.

  He caught sight of his parents being moved through a different set of doors and the tightness in his chest eased just a little. His parents were safe.

  The King and Queen were safe.

  Long Live Valleria.

  The motto, instilled in him long before his Navy training, echoed in his head.

  The ground shook again.

  Panic swarmed the crowd as the energy of fear wove through them, around them.

  His medical training took over, his eyes racing across the ballroom. Some had tripped but weren’t injured. Some falling objects had hit others in the head—they’d be his first stop—but they weren’t seriously injured, either.

  His eyes once again locked on hers.

  Anda. Anda Salamanca.

  Known the world over as a Spanish-Vallerian actress of fierce talent and persuasive eyes.

  He knew her true identity: a secret agent. A Vallerian agent, but an agent, nonetheless. That was her secret, and one he’d found out the hard way.

  How did he know? He knew things about her that even his older brother and Valleria’s spymaster, Marcello, didn’t know. Not to mention, she’d used her unique skills on him.

  On that thought, the ground shook once more.

  He watched in horror as the stage cracked…

  Then collapsed…

  And she disappeared from view.

  Anda remained crouched on the stage, her eyes locked with the prince she’d tried hard to forget. The last time she’d seen him, the last word she’d said to him had been his first name, though she doubted he’d heard her.

  It was hard to pull her gaze away from him, it always had been since the start. The inexplicable connection they had was not one easily broken, though he probably hated her after their last conversation…really, their last fight.

  Seeing him again, him knowing her secret, her knowing his…she found that once again she couldn’t look away. She’d thought she’d found everything with him and, even now knowing she hadn’t, she still yearned for him.

  Someone in the crowd yelled out in pain, reminding her where she was and what she was supposed to be doing.

  The mission. Always the mission first.

  The ground rumbled beneath her as the second explosion went off, and her gaze broke from his.

  She knew who had set the bombs, and why. They—an elusive terrorist group called the Vallerian Patriots, who obviously weren’t patriots at all—were here, and she must help stop them.

  The royals—bar Ethan—were being rushed away. Why wouldn’t he go? Why wouldn’t he leave? Why was no one saving him? She would have done it, but the action would have drawn too much attention to herself. As an actress, she was supposed to crave attention and did. As an agent and spy…attention would get her targeted or killed or worse. At this event, she was supposed to be a world-famous actress auctioning off a meal with herself for charity, not a royal-saving spy. While she was on stage, there were too many eyes on her, even now.

  She had to leave, find the third bomb that she knew was coming but not when. The entire building had been swept before the event begun, the threat coming in mere minutes after the royals had arrived and the Queen had taken the stage to make welcoming remarks. That meant someone had placed all the explosive devices here after the event had started and managed to get by all the agents to do so, whether the agents had been obvious, or unknown like her.

  It had to be one of the attendees. Someone on the guest list or staff had either placed the bombs or helped the people who did.

  She now scanned the crowd, looking for that weakness, that one clue that would help her discover who it might be. Was someone’s reaction too muted? Too over the top? Was there regret in their movements, or joy?

  Agents, some also undercover, helped the crowd as it rushed towards the doors. No agent was near the stage, at least none she recognized.

  That meant it was up to her to help those nearest, and try to find the third bomb.

  Her eyes met Ethan’s once more and she felt it. Not their connection, not this time. No, she felt it like a wave coming to crash at the shore, the sound and the feel of it coming closer and closer…she felt that same movement underneath her feet.

  And she knew where the next explosion would be…

  Underneath her.

  The crack and blister of wood was the first sound she heard. With barely a second, she braced herself…

  Then she lost sight of the man she loved and disappeared into the depths of the stage, the wood and glittering white of the stage decorations falling in on top of her.

  She must have blacked out for a few moments because when she blinked her eyes open, she sensed that time had briefly passed. The screaming of guests and the pounding of running feet was loud but distant, as if they were all near the exits and far from her.

  “Anda! Are you there?”

  His voice. God, how many times had she imagined him calling her name. She loved that voice. She shouldn’t, but she did.

  She felt the weight of debris over her. Though the heavy white drape of the stage backdrop managed to protect her from the harshest of the broken and battered wood, she was still covered in it.

  In the dark underneath the stage, the only light from above filtering from the stage down into the hole she’d just fallen through, she tried to push some of the destruction away. Her hand jerked as a splinter dove into it, the sharp stab of pain a reminder of who she was and that she’d faced much worse in the past.

  So, when the voice called again, she reminded herself that they could never be together, not just because of her own secret, but for his as well. They’d tried, hadn’t they? Tried and failed. There was no point pretending otherwise.

  Still, to keep him back—who knew if another explosive was nearby?—she tried to call out, but let out a series of coughs instead.

  “I hear you! I’m coming!”

  She coughed and cleared her throat, trying to move but not getting far with her constricting dress. “I’m fine! Go help somebody else!” she rasped.

  She heard him muttering and couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but she had a guess: he was coming to check on her no matter what she said.

  He should go, help others who needed it more. He knew she could take care of herself—she was, after all, working on the longest undercover job in existence. She was a tough bitch, who’d been through some serious shit. Fuck, yes, she could take care of herself. She had been, for many, many years, since long before he ever entered the picture.

  She tried to move again, shifting some debris off her left leg, which was bare due to a convenient slit in her dress up to her knees. She tore the slit higher, to her upper thigh, gaining movement and access to the gun she had strapped there. It was held there by a holster of her own design, made to look like a standard, sexy garter. She pulled out the weapon, checked it, and set it down while she adjusted the garter a little to hide the part of it that would reveal what it was. Someone would need to look closely indeed to discover what it really was but, hopefully in the mayhem surrounding them, no one would give it a second glance.

  Then again, she had fucking great legs, so some people were bound to notice it, but with any luck they’d be looking at her skin and not the garter itself.

  “Stop moving! You could be hurt.”

  She rolled her eyes as the sound of his crunching feet and shifting debris came closer and closer. She flipped off her incredibly beautiful, expensive—and unfortunately damaged—shoes so she could maneuver more easily. E
ven over debris, it would be easier to go barefoot than in sky-high heels, though she’d trained to run in both.

  Her boss’s boss’s boss, Prince Marcello, Valleria’s Minister of Security and Defense, was exacting when it came to training his agents. He’d had plans for her from the start, plans she’d agreed to, certain missions that she still hadn’t completed.

  At the thought of one prince, another came into view and rushed to her.

  He kneeled beside her, his hands immediately shifting over her body to check for injuries; even the lightest touch from him set her skin on edge in the most delicious, delightful way. “How bad are you hurt? You’re bleeding.”

  She frowned and looked over her now unencumbered arms and legs. “I’m fine.”

  His face took on that frustrated look she’d seen multiple times over their acquaintance. She found it incredibly adorable, though she’d never tell him that.

  He oh-so-gently cupped her face and did a doctor’s look into her eyes while he held up a hand. “Your head’s got quite a gash in it. Follow my finger.”

  She did as he asked, her eyes easily following. She gently patted her coiffure and, when she pulled away, her hand had an unmistakable coating of dark red.

  Damn it.

  While she wiped the blood off on the stage drape, he pulled out a handkerchief and gently brushed the wound. Though his suit was now dusty and dirty, the cloth he was using looked clean. However soft his touch, she still winced at the pain though she tried to hide it.