by Nana Malone
More silence on the other end. “You don’t think he deserves to hear about his cousin? He is the one with the power to do something about him.”
“Look, I’ll tell him, just in my own time, okay? I just need space and distance right now.”
I could tell she didn’t like that, but she was going to let me get away with it for now.
“Okay fine. But you call me the second you get to New York, okay?”
“You got it.” That was an easy promise to make.
“Oh, I forgot the main reason I wanted to talk to you before I found out that you were gone. Remember the night we went to the lab to hand over the vial to be tested?”
“Yeah, I remember. Why?”
The words came out rapid-fire as she got more and more excited. “I remembered you saying that you saw Robert flirting with that nurse at the lab that night, and I knew he’d really have no reason for being there at that time of night. So anyway, it was eating at me. I just wanted to check and verify maybe what time he left, just to see if he’d left with anyone, like a date or something. Anyway, I watched the security footage on the lab and all the surrounding areas. A block away from the lab, at the main branch of the bank, there was an Aston Martin parked there, an orange one. One guess as to whose car it was.”
I frowned. “Prince Ashton’s?”
“Bingo! You see, only a douche bag would drive an orange Aston Martin. Okay, so yeah, Prince Ashton could have been there for any reason, but then about twenty minutes after you and I left the lab, the security tapes show Robert getting into Prince Ashton’s car.”
My jaw unhinged. “What? But he hasn’t been assigned as his guard, and if Ashton was waiting in that car for him, what was he doing at the lab?”
“Oh you can guess.”
I could guess. “He was flirting with her to get access to the blood. But you and I had already been there.”
“Bingo. We’d already handed off the vial to be tested and taken possession of the blood on hand to give to Blake Security. Maybe he wanted to destroy the samples, or take them, or tamper with them, I don’t know. But he didn’t get what he was looking for, either way. The real question is whether or not he knows it yet.”
She was silent for a minute then she called out, “I’m coming,” and then came back on the line. “Listen, I need to go. My shift starts in a minute. But I just wanted to check on you and tell you that. Think it over, talk to your dad, confirm with Blake Security that the blood is safe because whatever Robert and Ashton were doing, it’s making me nervous. You need to tell Sebastian.”
“I’m sorry Ariel, I’ll work what I can from this angle with my dad, but I promise you, Sebastian won’t take my calls at this point. You need to work on getting this information to Roone. Roone Ainsley. Find him. He honestly loves Sebastian, and he’s close with Lucas. I’ll talk to Lucas too. Sebastian might listen to him.”
“Okay, I have to go. Please stay safe. Robert was probably the one who told Ashton about you and Sebastian. You need to watch your back, especially if he might have any clue where you’ve gone, okay?”
Oh God, I hadn’t even considered any of this. Maybe I should have picked a city no one would know. Was my life in danger? How was I going to protect Sebastian from here? I’d figure it out. But the first thing I needed to do was get ahold of Lucas. “I’ll stay safe. You too, okay? Right now we’re the only two who know about this connection between Robert and Ashton. Find my mom, find Roone, find my dad, and stay away from Ashton. You got it?”
“I got it. I love you, buttercup.”
“I love you too, mermaid.” As I hung up and ran my hand over the smooth part of my bun, my mind started to race. How the hell was I going to protect Sebastian from three thousand miles away?
* * *
Sebastian
Flanked by two guards in my own palace, I took the most secure route to Ethan’s as possible. I needed more info on Penny’s exact whereabouts. Luckily, my current guard would only think that I was looking for Ethan.
How did you fuck up so royally?
Well, being royal certainly helped. I just needed to talk to her, apologize for being a total ass, and tell her that before everything went to shit, I was going to let her know that I couldn’t be without her. But she was making that difficult. Good thing I was determined because I’d like to at least start over. My dick twitched with that, but I shut that down quick.
As much as I wanted her in my bed, if I wanted us to start over, we were going to have to start over from the beginning. It meant I was going to have to woo her and do all the things we’d started to do in New York. I was certainly up for the challenge. And then I would have a talk with the prime minister and the Regents Council about changing noble marriage laws. I might be able to put it to a vote if I could get my mother on my side. Lucas would back me, obviously. Those votes might be enough to sway the others.
When I arrived at the Marsh family doorstep, I knocked and held my breath as I waited. But no one answered. I knocked again, and finally, Michael Marsh came to the door. The guy had tossed on a T-shirt, and he looked like he was fresh from the shower as the thing clung to him and water drifted into his eyes. “Your Majesty.” Immediately he dropped to a knee.
“As you were.” Great, now what the hell was I going to say? How about you start with the truth?
“What can I do for you, Your Majesty?”
“Actually, I wanted to speak to your father about Penny.”
Michael’s brows dropped as he blinked rapidly. “I haven’t seen either of them all morning sir, but I woke up and everyone was gone. My father was already with the new recruits and my mother was on early shift with the queen. They had a delegation from Sweden flying in today. I didn’t see Penny. I just assumed she was at work. You might try Ariel.”
Ariel, I assumed, was the pixie-like redhead I’d always seen with Penny at events, the one who had put me in my place regarding my treatment of Penny. “Fantastic. Would you be able to direct me to her bungalow?”
Michael gave me directions to Ariel’s place. But as it turned out, he didn’t even need to bother because I ran into her in the gardens, looking like she was hell-bent on being somewhere. As soon as she saw me, she also dropped to a knee. “Your Majesty.” But somehow when she said it, it had lots of resentment and more bite.
“Ariel.” I was hoping this conversation was going to go better than our last one. “I was wondering if you’d seen Penny. I’ve been trying to find her all morning.”
She rose and gave me a blank stare before turning her focus somewhere over my shoulder. “I’m begging Your Majesty’s pardon, sir, but Penny left last night.”
I laughed. “I know. But I need something more specific. Like where she is and if she needs anything.”
For a moment, her gaze flickered to me and then back to that unknown point over my shoulder. “That’s not for me to say, sir. She left, and I’m not sure where she went.” There it was. That lip purse again, telling me that she had no intention on telling me anything else.
“You won’t tell me, will you?”
“If you don’t mind me saying so, perhaps it’s best that she’s gone. I think maybe she needed to focus on herself for a moment, Your Majesty.”
I had a rebuttal on the tip of my tongue. I did. But at the end of the day, Ariel was right. I’d had the girl I wanted in my arms, and I’d fucked it up. Now I had no idea how to get her back.
You’re not going to give up so easily, are you? The idea of never seeing her again, of letting her walk away, that hurt. And frankly, it pissed me the fuck off. I understood she never wanted to see me again, but damn it, I was going to make her say it to my face. We had a lot to talk about, and we weren’t done. Not by a long shot. “Thanks for letting me know, but you know, next time you talk to her, let her know I’m coming for her.” I leaned forward and lowered my voice so only she could hear. “Tell her if we’re done, she’s going to have to tell me that to my face.” When I stepped back, Ariel did the
one thing I didn’t expect. She smiled wide, completely transforming her face and making her soft and innocent.
“Well that’s what I’ve been waiting to hear. Now, as soon as you find her, you need to tell her what you just told me. Good luck, Your Majesty. Believe it or not, I’m actually rooting for you.” Then she turned on her heel and left without waiting to be dismissed. Funny thing was I kind of liked her.
* * *
Sebastian
“Sebastian, are you listening to me?”
I was still reeling from what Ariel had told Roone, but for now there was nothing for me to do. Coronation was in a week, and then I would officially become king. My mother had been taking the full brunt of the preparations, and I needed to pay attention to what she was saying, what she was doing. But I couldn’t. My mind was on Penny.
“Sorry, Mom, I’m just a little out of it.”
“Sebastian, this is important. You told me you were ready to do this. You told me you wanted to do this.”
“And I do.” I started pacing. “I want to do this, and I think I can do a good job. I just want to do it differently.”
She crossed her arms. “Sebastian, this country has been built on years of tradition and honor, and you can’t jerk the people around. You can’t say you want to be king and then—”
I put out my hand. “Mom, I’m not backing out or saying no. I just—” I ran my hands through my hair. “I want to marry a commoner.”
My mother blinked at me. Her lips parted as if she wanted to say something and then just snapped shut. Then she shook her head and tried again. “That Bridget girl? Her father is a duke. She’s hardly a commoner, but she’s a terrible person. Why would you want to marry her?”
I chuckled because my mother was right. Bridget wasn’t very nice. Not the kind of person I would ever envision myself with long-term.
“No, not Bridget. Penny.”
My mother’s brows lifted. “Oh, I see. So you finally came to your senses?”
It was time for my brows to do the whole surprised stance. “Yeah. Took a minute.”
“It’s nice to see you properly in love.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing.” I kept up the pacing and tried to get my mind around the whole thing. “I didn’t realize it either. And now I’ve let shit get out of control, and I exposed her.”
My mother took a seat then. “Oh, good Lord. Please tell me you do not have a sexually transmitted—“
“Oh, my God. No!!”
“What? You’re the one who said you had exposed her.”
“No! No! I meant that people would hurt her to get to me. So, even though I want her, I don’t know if it’s good for her.”
“What happened?”
I took the next several minutes to catch my mother up and sadly, she did not look the least bit surprised. “I have spoken to your uncle Roland about Ashton numerous times. He has zero respect for women and zero respect for the law. If there’s anyone in this country who should not be a royal, it’s him.”
“Why didn’t Dad ever do something about him?”
She threw up her hands. “You think he didn’t try? Those fancy ‘holidays’ he was sent on—” She made air quotes with her hands at the word holidays. “—were actually rehab for the cocaine, and then rehab for sex addiction. I wish there was a rehab for being an all-around asshole.”
I formed a small O with my mouth. I didn’t think I’d ever heard my mother curse. “Wow, tell me how you really feel. There has to be something we can do. I know he’s royal, so jail isn’t really what’s going to happen here, but something. Anything. He hurt Penny, and I feel like I have zero control and the anger and rage are going to consume me.”
She nodded and blinked back tears. “Yes, I understand. It’s what I’ve been feeling for the last month. But you are about to be king. You can make changes in the laws.”
“I need to get the regents behind me.”
“You don’t need the regents. Remember, you have the majority vote. You can do anything you want.”
This was true. I could push through any vote I wanted, including the marriage rules.
“It’s your legacy for your children. Do some real good with it.”
I had all power in the world to make things right with Penny. I had all the power in the world to change things, and I was going to. But I needed to find my fucking cousin, and then I was going to make him pay.
27
Penny
It was funny. I spent most of my life trying to get away from my family and my parents, but the moment I left because I chose to, I missed them terribly. I felt like a fish out of water. Even though I knew I shouldn’t, even though I wanted to be strong and tough it out and see what I could make out of myself on my own, I caved and called home to check on Ariel. She answered on the first ring. “Oh my God, there you are. Is this you? It’s a New York phone number. I assumed it was you. Tell me this is Penny.”
I laughed. Every one of her words made me miss her even more. I missed the smell of the ocean. I missed the comfort of home. The weather in New York had already turned, and I realized that I was an island girl, cut out for the milder temperatures, not for bloody cold weather. Last night it had gotten down into the forties. I was not a fan.
You said you wanted this, so suck it up. “Hey, how are you? Yes, this is my new number. Go ahead and save it. Sorry I didn’t keep the last one, but you’re the only option if Sebastian tries to track me down. I didn’t want to have a weak moment, you know?”
“Listen, Penny, about that—”
“No Ariel, we already talked about this. We’re not going to go and give out second chances.”
“No, that’s not what I was going to say. Although, I completely think that he does deserve a second chance because he’s beside himself about your leaving. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“What’s going on?”
“I found Roone like you said. I told him what happened to you.”
“You did what?” I sat up off of my bed, which, consequently, also doubled as my couch. “You were supposed to tell him our theories on Prince Ashton and Robert. You were not supposed to tell him about what happened to me.”
“Cool your jets. I know what I was supposed to tell him, but the fact of the matter is that something bad happened to you. And I needed Sebastian to have that information. So, you know, I did what I had to do. I was going to tell him about Robert and Ashton, but then it occurred to me that we need more proof because anything that implicates Robert is going to implicate Michael. And knowing your dad, he’s going to want to see something concrete. As far as he is concerned, Robert seemed like part of the family. Do you feel me?”
She had a point. Robert had been part of the family. He’d been in and out of my house since he was a kid. Would my father really take his side over mine though? How was this even a question?
“Yeah, that’s a good point. I’m starting to wonder if coming here was a good idea because there’s not much I can do from this distance.”
“Yes, there is, actually. If only we knew a group of sexy, badass men who were already on retainer by the Crown and in charge of protecting the king. I’m doing what I can on this angle, but let’s face it, Matthias is next level. You could get him to start looking for an angle, a connection between Robert and Prince Ashton, you know, other than the obvious. Something to tie them together. Right now, all we have is circumstantial nonsense. Prince Ashton gained nothing from King Cassius’s death. He only stood to gain if something happened to the two of them.”
“He already tried, remember? Sebastian is only walking around because we thwarted that.”
“Yes, but why kill the king? If he’d already tried and failed to kill Sebastian, then why bother killing King Cassius at all? It doesn’t make sense unless we’re missing a piece of the puzzle. Once Sebastian was home, whoever wanted King Cassius dead was going to have to play the patience game. That could take years. Sooner or later someone was going to either disc
over that the king was poisoned, or they would have to wait several more years to kill Sebastian. It’s not timely enough. Besides, let’s face it: Ashton isn’t brave enough to pull this off. He’s the kind of guy to do a Google search on the best poisons to use. And I hacked his system. I couldn’t find anything like that. He’s just not bright enough.”
This was true. Ashton was no mastermind. He was violent, yes; disgusting and a chauvinist, absolutely. But bright? Not really. And to be fair, all he wanted were the trappings of power, not the responsibilities. He didn’t actually want to rule. It would cut into his partying too much. So who really stood to gain? And how was Robert involved? “Okay, I can do that. I just need Blake Security’s word that they won’t go running to Sebastian and tell him where I am.”
“Actually, I’ve got a solution for that.”
“Oh no. How come every time you get a solution for a problem, I worry about what that’s going to mean for me?”
Ariel’s laugh was low and flirty. “Oh come on. My plans work great. They got you to fall in love.”
“With a guy I can’t have.”
“Semantics. Besides, I have full faith that you guys are going to figure this out.”
I couldn’t afford to wish and hope for that. “Love you. I’ll call you later.”
So now what? I stared at the hotel room for a moment. This was what I'd run too. I'd left my perfectly nice home.
I sat on the bed and hugged my knees to myself. Who the hell moved to a city with no job, one friend, and a profession that required lots of room and space and a subjective eye? You are an idiot. You should have stayed at home.
No, I had to stay here. I was not going to turn tail and run. Besides, nothing would've ever gotten better if I’d stayed. Sebastian and I would've wrecked each other. Well, he would have done most of the wrecking, and it would have hurt.
