“I love you, too. And I can’t wait to see you again.” Darling heard his uncle’s muffled voice on the other side of his door as he interrogated Darling’s guards. “I have to go.”

Her features sobered instantly as she leaned forward. “Please be safe.”

“You, too.”

She blew him a kiss before she disconnected.

Darling had barely hidden the link he wasn’t supposed to have under his cover before his door crashed open.

Arturo glared at him.

Biting back a curse, Darling forced himself to appear nonchalant. “What did I do now?”

“First, you know better than to cut the feed to your room. How many times have I told you to keep it live?”

Yeah, Arturo couldn’t stand it if he couldn’t spy on him. Pervert. But for obvious reasons—like plotting Arturo’s death—Darling had pulled the feed hours ago. “Sorry if, unlike you, I prefer to masturbate in private.”

Growling in fury, his uncle closed the distance between them to shove an electronic ledger in his face. “What’s this?”

“A ledger.”

Arturo slapped him with it.

Darling clenched his fist, but stopped himself before he struck back.

“Were you feeding that other butt monkey with my money?”

His rage snapped into place and it took everything he had not to crush Arturo’s throat… one hit and he could end all his problems.

Don’t do it. You won’t die alone…

So he struck back with words. “Last I checked, it was my father’s money, not yours.”

That got him a vicious punch to the jaw. Pain exploded through his head.

Damn, that hurt. Good thing he was used to it.

Arturo kicked at him. “Do you know what your father would think of you if he could see what you are? He’d be even more repulsed by you than I am. If he were still alive, you’d have been thrown out on the street years ago. Something I should have done the first time I caught one of your butt nuts coming out of your room.”

But they both knew why Arturo couldn’t really throw him out. Only a full-blooded, legitimate governor could disinherit a full-blooded heir. That had been one nuisance law his uncle had been unable to overturn. No matter the threat or violence, the CDS refused to budge on the original thirty-five Unification Laws that had been drafted and ratified when the Caronese Empire was first founded 3,408 years ago. Those laws were the bedrock of all others and deemed to be sacred and above contestation or revocation.

Thank the gods for that.

Not to mention, if Darling was thrown out, his uncle couldn’t monitor him.

Or kill him under mysterious circumstances.

Even if Arturo did manage to toss him out, once Darling turned thirty, as a full-blooded heir, he could return and overthrow the bastard.

And all because his uncle was the by-blow of a prostitute Darling’s grandfather had elevated to royal mistress status. Arturo could only rule so long as Darling and Drakari lived, and were deemed by law to be minors or incompetent.