Page 28 of Ruthless
“Not really. Once he agreed to spare Homer, I pushed what happened out of my mind.”
The king had been in a difficult position since the entire country had known about his decision to have the tree chopped down. Acquiescing to an eight-year-old child, even if it was his daughter, hadn’t necessarily been a good look for the monarchy. It had, however, become an amusing human interest story that Gideon knew was still discussed in history classes today.
To settle the matter, the king had christened Homer the official tree of Ile de la Lune. A small brick wall had been built around the circumference of the tree, and a plaque had been placed at the site, decreeing that anyone caught desecrating or climbing the tree would be imprisoned.
Princesse Evangelina had never climbed the tree again, and the tree was still standing. It likely would stand for several centuries more.
Eve shook her head slowly, clearly having trouble coming to terms with what he’d just shared. The more he had talked, the paler she had become. While myriad emotions played across her face, her most telling reaction was the tremor of her chin.
“I don’t understand. Why the secrecy? Why would you keep this from me?”
“If I’d told you I was there, I would have had to tell you so much more. I couldn’t take the risk. The day you saved Homer was the day I went home and told my parents I was going to be a royal guard.”
He still remembered the look of horror on both their faces. Not because it wasn’t a noble profession. Protecting lives was perhaps the noblest of all professions, but it had been decided long before he could walk that he would be a doctor. That had been his parents’ goal for him, and Gideon had fully embraced it. He’d excelled in his studies, and biology had been his favorite subject in school. Though his parents had been relying on him getting scholarships, any extra money had been set aside for their children’s college funds.
Most parents might have nodded at such a proclamation and assumed their child would change his mind as he matured. But they knew their son. Even as a child, if Gideon said he was going to do something, he did it.
He’d had no problems in planning to fulfill his parents’ dream for him, until he’d had a dream of his own.
“Why would you want to become a royal guard?”
Though he could tell by her tone she already knew the answer, he shrugged and said, “You wanted to protect the defenseless, Eve. I wanted to be the one to protect the defender.”
“You could have done that in another capacity. Why a royal guard?”
Explaining how he’d felt that day would be impossible. Even after all the years, he couldn’t define the impact she’d had on him. “My life, up until that day, had been a series of tasks to get through. I had a plan, knew where I was going and how to get there. Seeing you—seeing what you did—it changed me. Before that, I thought I knew what courage was, but seeing someone so young, so vulnerable, unable to defend herself, but still standing up for what she believed was right.” He shook his head. “I had never seen anyone braver than you were that day.”
Despite the hurt gleaming in her eyes from his confession, a wry smile lifted her mouth. “It wasn’t as if they were going to chop my head off. I was the princesse. I knew they wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Eve, you were eight years old and terrified, but you stood up against what likely looked like giants to you. You believed in something bigger than yourself. A lot of people go through life never standing up for anything, and there you were, this tiny child doing it for all the world to see.” He shrugged again. “You altered my view of life that day.”
“Gideon, this is just…I don’t know what to say.”
“My parents, as you might guess, were less than thrilled with my announcement.”
“Didn’t they want you to be a doctor?”
“Yeah. Needless to say, my new career choice did not go over well.”
“But you didn’t become a royal guard. I would have known.”
Royal guards protected the royal family, while palace guards protected the castle. It had been his goal to protect the princess.
His smile was both wry and sad. “The saying ‘life happens when you’re busy making other plans’ isn’t just a cheesy T-shirt slogan.”
“Your mother’s death?”
“Yeah.” Even though he had kept many things from Eve, she knew almost everything about his family.
When his mother had died, their family had almost died, too. Gideon’s father had been inconsolable. Charlotte, Gideon’s mother, had been his father’s soul mate. They had married five weeks after meeting and were together for just over seventeen years.
His maman had been his favorite person in the world, and while he had grieved like any fifteen-year-old who’d lost the mother he adored, he’d had no choice but to take up the slack for his father. Elliott Wright had gone into the deepest, darkest depression, leaving Gideon to take charge of his three younger siblings.
He did his best to not blame his father for abdicating his role. Watching the man fade away had been both painful and infuriating. They had gone from a picture-perfect family to a dysfunctional nightmare in a matter of days. Gideon had always known his maman was the heart of their family, but he had never anticipated that her death would create a hole that could not be filled.
When Gideon was eighteen, Elliott Wright had stopped trying altogether. Two weeks after Gideon’s birthday, he’d found his father on the floor of their bathroom. There was no obvious cause of death, and the coroner ruled it a heart attack. Gideon had known a different truth. Elliott Wright had willed himself to die.
Having no choice, Gideon became the legal guardian of his siblings. Reed and Rory had been thirteen, and Theo had been almost sixteen. Taking charge of three teenagers when he’d still been one himself had been no picnic. There’d been days when he’d wanted to just leave everything behind, but he’d refused to give up. There wasn’t a day that went by now that he wasn’t glad he had stuck with it. His brothers and sister were some of the finest people he knew, and he was proud of who they’d become.