Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 68691 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68691 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
But I shrugged. This was our life. It was light years different from Kansas and the farm we’d grown up on, but we didn’t have a traditional small-town upbringing either. Our mom had kept us hidden from the world, isolated almost, choosing to home-school us, part of her conviction that the local public school was no good academically. And it’d worked out perfectly because as a flight attendant she only worked a week per month, so there was plenty of time to oversee our education.
And our dad? Well, he’s the Crown Prince of St. Venetia. Yeah, you heard me right. Our dad is Prince Georg of St. Venetia, aging playboy, wealthy philanthropist, classic car collector, and total asshole. During one of the few conversations when Violet had been willing to discuss Georg, we didn’t get much out of her.
“So where did you meet?” I’d asked. Karl was listening just as intently, even though he was filling up a water jug with some muscle mass powder. At fifteen, we were athletically oriented, looking to build up muscle, strength, speed and agility, make ourselves into superheroes.
“On a flight,” replied Violet. Her hair was already going grey despite being only about thirty-five, and brackets surrounded her eyes and mouth. But you could tell that Violet had once been beautiful, a real stunner.
“A flight to where?” I pressed.
“I think Jerusalem,” said Violet vaguely. “I was a flight attendant and your dad, well he was flying first class as you might have guessed.”
“But where was he going? How did you guys start talking?” I pressed.
“He was headed to some government function, maybe meeting the Prime Minister of Israel,” my mom sighed, twisting the rings around her fingers. They were silver, nothing expensive. “I offered him champagne, he asked for another, and before I knew it …” her voice trailed off.
“You got his number right?” I said. “Or he got yours?”
My mom sighed again.
“Kato, it wasn’t like that,” she said. “We didn’t date or anything, it was, um, a spontaneous liaison.”
I heard a snort from my brother in the corner, even as I looked at Violet incredulously. Yeah, Karl and I were fifteen but old enough to figure out what my mom was saying. Although she spoke in riddles, Violet was telling us that Prince Georg had taken her as part of the Mile High Club, that we’d been conceived in a plane lavatory about five miles up in the air, going five hundred miles an hour. Holy shit, it was straight out of some fucked-up Playboy fantasy.
But I wanted to know more.
“But why didn’t you keep in touch? Did you tell him about us?” I asked insistently, determined to get some answers. Again, I was an adolescent and every teenage boy is sensitive, especially when it comes to daddy issues. Boys are growing, listening, developing their characters at that age and Karl and I were no exception.
Violet sighed.
“No, we didn’t keep in touch, honey. I knew that Georg was someone important, but baby, I’d never even heard of St. Venetia before,” she said. Clearly, my mom wasn’t one for world geography or political history. “I was young and besides, it was just a one-time thing. By the time I realized that you guys were on the way, the flight was long over.”
Okay, so it was literally wham, bam, thank you ma’am. But that didn’t answer how she’d finally figured out his identity. So I pressed for more.
“How did you finally discover that our dad was Prince Georg?” I said slowly. “What tipped you off?”
My mom sighed again.
“I was flipping through a magazine, the latest issue of Ok!” she confessed, “and I saw a spread of the St. Venetian Palace, with your dad and his wife posing,” she said. “It was a shocker, sure. I’d never expected to figure out who he was, tearing out my hair at how to provide for my new babies, when suddenly the magazine opened and poof! It was like magic. Your dad is a rich man, royalty even, and I figured he’d be interested in knowing he had infant sons.”
“But he didn’t,” I said with a definite tang of bitterness in my voice.
“He didn’t,” my mom confirmed. “I contacted the embassy, I contacted the Palace, but all I got back were denials that Prince Georg had even been on a flight to Israel at that time. It was like I was some insane person, some crazy girl trying to make a buck off of him. So I gave up after a couple years and moved with you guys to the United States. And here we are,” she said with a wry smile, gesturing to our humble home. She’d bought the house as part of a foreclosure sale and done no repairs to the place, so it was sadly rundown, sinking on its foundation, the counters dated and dreary, our furniture from a church giveaway.