Be Mine, King (The Crown Duet #1) - Chelsea McDonald Page 0,10

I should give up. My brothers had warned me about exactly this, I was to expect resistance.

“My brother, the man of many words.” His pen finally dropped, head raising to take me in as he leaned back in his chair.

“Things can always go better, Nikolai. Just don’t forget that this is a lot for her to take in. She may have been on your mind for years but you haven’t been on hers. This will all be very new to her.” With my teeth clenched I nodded my head, but the truth was, I was impatient. I’d waited for her for years, I didn’t want to wait any longer.

When I came to my brother all those years ago asking for his advice, I had a simple crush.

I’d seen a pretty thing that I wanted to own. Now...it was different, I knew her. Anastasia wasn’t just a pretty revenge piece now. I had spent hours, days, weeks, years getting to know her. I had watched her, studied her - and fallen in love with her.

It was only natural for me to seek my brother’s advice because that’s what I’d always done. Out of all of my brothers, for as long as I could remember, I was closest with Finch. Not just in age although maybe that had unknowingly helped our bond.

There was never a time that we were apart. We shared everything, helped each other with everything. I would protect him from the neighborhood bullies on the playground, and he would spend hours teaching me how to speak, without a stutter.

“So, when will we all get to meet her?” My brother's hands clapped together as his demeanor suddenly changed - lightened. We’d always been as thick as thieves, I could understand his piqued curiosity.

I had a stutter when I was younger. I had been so embarrassed by it that I would rather not talk at all. Finch taught me that it was okay to take my time, and then he spent hours practicing my trigger words with me. Over and over.

It got easier to deal with, little by little and then it went away altogether.

“You know you’re always welcome at the house, it’s your home as well,” I emphasized like I always did when it came to the family property.

My house just so happened to be the one we grew up in. When our parents died they left each of us a different avenue of their fortune. I got the house. I didn’t have particularly fond memories of the place but there was no way I could ever get rid of it.

It had been passed down through the family for years. It was basically an heirloom.

Except, you couldn’t stuff this one in a closet and forget about it for years to come.

So, after a lot of thought and renovations, I swallowed my tongue and moved in. I had always felt a small amount of guilt that I got it over my brothers. Zedd and Drex hadn’t ever given it a second thought. I think they had similar feelings about the house.

But Finch? There’d been animosity there.

Maybe he felt he deserved it because he was the official head of the family. But, despite how much I didn’t want it. A childish side of me didn’t want Finch to have it more.

I gave him my position.

I wouldn’t give him my inheritance as well.

Besides, with the renovations, I began to come around. It would prove itself useful as a family home. I had a feeling Anastasia would make that long-wished-for dream disappear into thin air if she ever found out about it.

But I still held out hope.

“I just don’t think forcing my family on her right now would be such a good idea. I mean, I don’t want to scare her even more.”

When I’d run to Finch for help five years ago, he’d laughed at my notion of love at first sight. He hadn’t thought I was serious. I remembered the night as if it were seared into my brain, it was the night I visited her father - her sixteenth birthday. Finch said to give it time, that it was just a crush and that it would go away over time.

It had started to really sink in a few days later, when I couldn’t stop thinking about her I knew I had to have her.

I would describe myself as a very focused person, goal orientated. Other people had different names for it, I’d heard them all my life but my brother would insist