The Torn Prince Read online

  First Published in Great Britain in 2021 by

  LOVE AFRICA PRESS

  103 Reaver House, 12 East Street, Epsom KT17 1HX

  www.loveafricapress.com

  Text copyright © Zee Monodee, 2021

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  The right of Zee Monodee to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Also available as paperback

  Royal House of Saene

  The Princesses:

  His Defiant Princess by Nana Prah

  His Inherited Princess by Empi Baryeh

  His Captive Princess by Kiru Taye

  The Princes:

  The Torn Prince by Zee Monodee

  The Resolute Prince by Nana Prah

  The Tainted Prince by Kiru Taye

  The Illegitimate Prince by Empi Baryeh

  The Future King by Kiru Taye

  Blurb

  Prince Zediah ‘Zed’ Saene is the sensitive and solemn kind. Nothing shakes him from his solid rock persona. Until the day he crosses paths with Rio, a woman who inflames his body, scorches his heart, and burns his soul to cinders. His passionate love for her is strong enough to move mountains. Then tragedy strikes back home, and he is forced to exit her life without a goodbye.

  Riona ‘Rio’ Mittal has worked hard to get over the contemplative young man who caught her very being in his web of quiet force and soulful presence then dropped her like a smelly old sock. On the verge of setting her life to rights, in walks Zed again to claim the child he’s found out she had in his absence.

  Zediah wants his heir, and nothing will stop him. Except, ‘nothing’ has a name: Rio Mittal, who won’t shy away from making him face up to his innermost demons. Rio has his son, and all of Zed belongs to her … yet he is, first and foremost, part of the Royal House of Saene. Torn between duty and love, how will he reconcile the two?

  Chapter One

  “August would be much better for the ceremony, don’t you think?”

  Zediah Akiina Saene, prince of Bagumi and currently third-in-line for the throne, sighed and closed his eyes briefly as the woman’s voice trailed off on the phone. They were now in November, and this was the second time she had postponed their wedding preparations.

  Not that he minded—the sigh had been more of relief than anything else. Neither he nor Bilkiss, his betrothed, wanted to get married. He would just about recognise her in a room full of women, her tall stature flirting with six feet the only thing to make her stand out to him. He would bet she’d also have trouble singling him out in a packed crowd.

  But duty bade they marry. Bilkiss was the daughter of General Noda, the president of the neighbouring nation of Barakat.

  With this alliance, Barakat would be able to stave off the crushing, almost-foregone result of having to replace its bio-diverse rainforest with oil palm plantations for much-needed income. Bagumi’s aid and money would help them stay afloat without the need for an ecological disaster.

  They would also settle the tiff between Bagumi fishermen and their Barakat counterparts, who always menacingly claimed the neighbours intruded into their territorial waters.

  “Zed?”

  He snapped out of his thoughts and shook his head. “As you wish.”

  Again, truth be told, this situation suited him just fine. Aside from this ongoing dispute over their sea rights ownership, both countries were relatively at peace with one another and cooperating.

  If they could keep things on this even keel for however long it would last, he’d go along with the fact that Bilkiss seemed in no rush to tie the noose around his neck. Guess she hadn’t fallen prey to all the hype about the ‘ridiculously handsome and eligible princes of Bagumi.’

  How utterly refreshing. On any given day, his brothers would be swatting gold-diggers away as one would pesky flies. He’d escaped a similar fate mostly by hiding his identity during his time abroad, and he hardly made any ripples back here. Not when he had six siblings to take care of that for him.

  “Thanks, Zed. You don’t know what this means to me,” she said.

  An echo of his own relief rang in her tone, and he smiled softly. “I want you to be happy, Bilkiss.”

  She was a nice girl, all things considered. Just not his type, because his type was—

  He slammed the lid down on the thought before the train could leave the station.

  “You, too, Zed.”

  He nodded and cut the call. Strange how it still felt a bit odd to hear himself being addressed as such. Aside from his siblings, the people at the palace very rarely shortened his name. When he’d been living in England, he’d had a whole other moniker, a nickname given to him by his friends.

  He sighed and threw a look at the expertly appointed suite he called his bedroom. Gilt and velvet, which often felt like the stuffy trappings of a privileged life, choked him regularly, or worse, sucked all the air out of the space, making him suffocate. He’d felt this way almost every time he’d been back at the royal palace in his homeland. Here, princely duties meant no fun, no escape like making music in peace—how unprincely of him to be a ‘DJ.’

  Technically, he was a music producer, but being behind a mixing console, well, it’s what DJs did, right? He shook his head. Bagumi, Bagumi.

  Though he loved his family, the royal palace no longer felt like home half the time. London did. London, where he’d built a life, one of his choosing, not the one thrust on him from birth.

  He needed music to live like people needed air to breathe. Making music helped to balance his life, a sort of self-care. Without it, he was choking.

  He closed his eyes. Mistake number one, as all his senses jumped to high alert. Rushing blood thumped against his temples loudly.

  Mistake number two was focusing on anything except the pounding pulse. He noticed his tongue growing thicker, blocking his buccal cavity, obliterating the path to his throat.

  Arms flailing, he trudged to the French windows and threw the panes open, hurling his body outside into the fresh air. The thick, muggy air proved less than refreshing, with the rainy season drawing to its close this month. Still, it felt less stale than the stifling interior.

  Forcing his jaw to unlock, he wiggled his tongue around as he gulped in huge inhales. When the burn in his lungs started to ease, he clasped the wrought-iron railing of the balustrade and let the cool of the metal flow into him. Eyes closed, he paused and focused on his breath. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.

  Minutes passed where he concentrated on bringing himself to a calm state again.

  Zediah cleared his head and tried to focus. These episodes had been coming much too frequently lately. True, he hadn’t spent this long at the family home since he’d turned eighteen, almost a decade ago. Usually, he’d find a way to split his time between Darusa, the capital of Bagumi, where the royal family lived, and London, with stints in LA and Ibiza or even Hong Kong. But he’d been here for a while, going on eighteen months. This place and its creativity silence was getting to him.

  Male laughter and hollers resounded from the ground a few storeys below.

  Zediah peered over the railing and groaned, gripping the metal even tighter.

  Of course, his brothers would be out there, getting sweaty and buff and
becoming even more prince-like. Who on Earth discussed military strategy while doing pull-ups or tossing a ball around?

  And, of course, it looked like they all belonged together, all big and sweaty and buff and prince-like.

  He had never looked like he fit in. While no one would call him scrawny, it was like lining up David Beckham or Cristiano Ronaldo against a wall of rugby fullbacks. It just didn’t add up, did it?

  Worse, he’d never felt like he fit in with them. Perfect example? Military strategy.

  Growing up, he’d been teased relentlessly how the talks around tea and other artistic collaborations he championed were for princesses, not princes. Men got behind diplomatic tables hard and fast, full stop.

  As such, he always got pushed into the corner where he felt like he had to measure up. There’d been a lot of it growing up, testosterone overload and masculine posturing. Although his teen brothers had compared their bicep sizes rather than the length of their dicks, thank goodness! Not that it had stopped them from teasing him when they could.

  Zawadi and Zik knew when to drop the ball and cut him some slack. But Zareb?

  Zediah groaned. Half the time, he wanted to grab a fencing blade to skewer his Olympic medallist twin. Or get his hands on the pole stuck up Zareb’s arse and whack him over the head with it. They were fraternal twins. He would’ve been seriously perplexed had they been identical, and Zareb had turned out such a stickler for rules and propriety.

  Azikiwe—also known as Zik—and Zediah had been the closest when growing up. Two peas in the same pod who riffed on musical instruments during many an afternoon, him on the piano, Zik on his guitar. They’d even entertained the family on numerous evenings.

  But what had been okay when they’d been kids and teens wasn’t for adults.

  When Zediah had left for university, the bond between him and Zik had severed. He’d returned home to find his elder brother had moved on to partying hard with a whole new set of friends Zediah had never really gotten on with.

  The ringing phone back in the room intruded upon his thoughts. He released the railing, wincing as the blood returned to his fingers and set off a million pins and needles in them. His digits still felt like sausages by the time he picked the device.

  “What’s up, mate?” he greeted his best friend, Nick, who lived in London.

  “Check your screen,” Nick replied. At the same time, a little beep announced a file had come through.

  Zediah pulled the phone away to open the picture. His breath lodged in his throat. No, he would not let his heartbeat accelerate again.

  “What the fuck, man?” he bit out.

  “It’s the gal you were head over heels for, innit?”

  Why on Earth would his best mate rub salt on his wounds?

  A realisation slid in then. Salt still made the wound sting because the damn injury was still open. It—his heart, him, whatever—hadn’t healed yet.

  “Gary Dicknell’s wife—”

  “Ex-wife,” he corrected.

  “Yeah, but you had the hots for her when she was still married to him.”

  Not something he was proud of, but it was what it was. “And your point would be?”

  “You did shag her last time you were here, eh? It was her.”

  “I didn’t—” They hadn’t shagged. They’d made love. Seriously. Although it’d been the one night, it hadn’t been just another fuck for him, and likely not for her, too. But this was Nick, renowned divorce barrister. One never sought to give the man a bone to devour. “Never mind. Yeah.”

  “Roughly about …”

  He sighed. “Eighteen months ago.”

  More like seventeen months, three weeks, four days, and about eight hours, give or take.

  Another ping came from the phone.

  “Put me on speaker,” Nick asked.

  Zediah did as told, then opened the file, and the bottom dropped from everything he’d ever known. His heart started racing again, the thickness returning to his mouth.

  Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

  The picture was the same as the one that had come in earlier. Except, it had been strongly zoomed in on the woman before. The complete picture showed her walking in a red coat, pushing a pram, a seated baby clearly visible in it.

  A baby with darker skin than hers and a thatch of soft black curls on its head.

  While no one would describe her as fair, she wasn’t exactly dark, her skin the rich golden hue of roasted peanuts.

  But this kid?

  “Could be your baby, right?” Nick asked.

  The sound of his voice shattered the spell around Zediah, but only just. He could hardly do anything beyond staring at this child. He found himself pinching the screen to blow up the image, obliterating her from the frame, his focus only on the baby.

  He couldn’t be sure, the pixels so grainy at this depth, but if someone had mixed his dark skin with her golden tone, it could come out as this deep toffee little chubby ball. And the hair … She’d always had stick-straight locks, but the curls here—could the combination with his kinky African hair have resulted in this?

  “Switz? Hello?”

  He blinked upon hearing the nickname anyone in London or his close friends knew him by.

  “When … when was this shot taken?” he asked.

  “This morning. I spotted her on Sloane Street, near the shops.”

  Zediah frowned. What would she be doing there? Window-shopping, maybe? A stroll out in the nicer neighbourhoods? Her usual destinations were all on Oxford Street, if he recalled properly. Plus, she’d mentioned she was moving back to Southall in West London, where her family lived.

  He’d tried to put her out of his mind, had done his darnedest best in that regard. But this? This changed everything.

  “How did I not know?” he asked softly.

  “She keeps her life very private,” Nick replied. “Plus, the paps have moved on to more scandalous WAGs. After her divorce from Dicknell, she became old news.”

  He shook his head. Even when she’d been a WAG—a wife and girlfriend of a famous sportsperson—she’d been more the low-profile type. It only made sense she’d retire into the shadows once the spotlight of Gary Bicknell’s numerous extra-marital affairs stopped shining on her.

  “She didn’t tell me, Nick.”

  Silence came from the other side. Then, “What are you going to do?”

  Zediah took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. It wouldn’t do to act in a rash manner, but if this were his child … He had to find out.

  In his heart, he already knew. He’d always thought men spouted utter BS when they waxed lyrical and poetic about seeing their offspring for the first time and their worlds shifting, but he’d been a total idiot. Because he, too, knew. This child—a boy? Girl? —was his. And there was no way as a father he wouldn’t have a place in its life.

  “I’m coming to London,” he said.

  “Crash at mine,” Nick said. “I’ll be in Singapore for the next two weeks.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Already on my way to City Airport. I’ll see you when I see you, mate.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  He would’ve loved to have Nick there with him, but this was something he had to do. Alone.

  Now, to get to London.

  A knock on the door interrupted his musings.

  The man in the hallway bowed. “Her Majesty Queen Zulekha has requested you join her, Your Highness. She is in the Winter Garden.”

  As he groaned inside, Zediah, however, acknowledged the servant and nodded. He would’ve done it by name, but these men and women in livery seemed to go through a revolving door, making it hard to keep up. This irked him—he’d always prided himself on his human touch. The world of music had no place for evident class distinctions, and he carried this viewpoint with him everywhere.

  The man turned on his heel and shuffled away, leaving him standing on the threshold as he contemplated whether he could get out of
this summons. Fat chance, though. His mother would be waiting, expecting him to get there yesterday.

  Then there was this matter of needing to leave for London. He hadn’t stepped foot outside the country since his return. As they all loved to remind him, he’d dropped his bombshell, which had had its terrible consequences. Never would he live it down, and he’d taken the edict to stay put and finally behave in a princely manner as penance for what he’d done.

  He could nip to London quickly and be back right away with his child, couldn’t he? His parents wouldn’t begrudge him that, surely. Best not to let them know about the baby, though. Under no light would it look good for a royal prince to have fathered a child out of wedlock, let alone not know of the kid’s existence even close to a year later. He already had enough ticks in the ‘Black Sheep’ category as things stood.

  With leaden feet, he trudged from the second floor of one wing to the ground level on the other side of the royal compound, where the prettier gardens were located.

  A burst of cool moisture touched his skin as he entered the conservatory known as the Winter Garden. Orchids bloomed inside this structure, reminiscent of Changi Airport in Singapore. Consequently, the temperatures were kept to a low twenty-three degrees Celsius year-round. When the mercury flirted with forty and above, this place earned its name fully and proved to be a welcoming abode in the scorch of summer.

  Until one spotted the occupants—usually either Queen Zulekha or Queen Sapphire, the king’s two wives. And just Zediah’s luck today as both women were at the glass-topped wrought-iron table sipping tea like, well, queens.

  He paused a few feet away to give a deep bow in respect, then straightened when his mother issued the words for him to rise. Going to the table—and resisting the urge to sigh, or run, or both—he bent to drop a soft kiss on Queen Zulekha’s taut, walnut-brown skin.

  “Mum,” he greeted his birth mother.