Dropping onto the couch, he turned on his laptop. Out of habit he scanned the tabloids to make sure there were no fires to put out. Things had gotten batshit crazy with the guys at the bachelor party. Journalists had caught wind of it, and some employees from the venue had leaked information. Rico had spent all day yesterday negotiating with media outlets, releasing curated pictures of the party and throwing in videos and sound bites from Zee and Tanya about their wedding to keep the illegally taken pictures out. Information was power, and controlling how you disseminated it was the difference between disaster and adulation.

Being the public face of his team for years meant Rico could divert scandal in his sleep. He reminded himself that it wasn’t his job anymore. That meant the team was going to have to find another face. But hell if he was going to let the tabloids make a mockery out of his best mate’s wedding.

After making sure that the paps had kept their end of the bargain, Rico skimmed the news. In America, the California primary race was gathering steam. Yash Raje’s name caught his eye. The candidate’s speech at the last Democratic convention was possibly the most exciting thing Rico had heard in politics in decades. He inhaled the piece about how the candidate had used a wheelchair for a few years as a teen.

Rico had to laugh. Now that he had let the portal to his younger self open, everything seemed to lead right back there. Ashna had rarely talked about her family, but her cousin’s accident had still been fresh back then and Rico remembered her telling him about how the doctors had declared that Yash would never walk again and how he had refused to believe them.

Yash’s quote should have sounded like the usual politician drivel about being able to overcome anything, about the human spirit and its power, yada yada. Only, the man had a way of making you believe it. The one thing my parents taught me was that only you can fix what you know to be wrong.

“It’s what my parents taught me too, mate,” Rico said to his laptop.

In all these years he hadn’t googled her, or kept track of her. He’d put all his attention into his game. Into proving her words about him wrong.

Don’t you see? When you look at it from my father’s point of view, you have no future.

Well, he’d ended up proving her father wrong, hadn’t he? Even a washed-up prince too full of himself to see that they didn’t live in the eighteenth century anymore would have to admit that Rico’s future had turned out rather spectacularly.