by Nana Malone
"What's up?"
"Okay, I'm on an assignment abroad."
"It's a secure line, Ariel. I know you're on Jessa duty."
"Wow, okay. It makes it easier to speak plainly. I don't know how much you know, but someone accessed Jessa's files, particularly those on her recent whereabouts. I'm not sure exactly what they were looking for, but here's the kicker… it says I accessed the files."
There was a silent pause. "What?"
"Exactly."
"If you're overseas, you couldn't have accessed the files."
"I know. Exactly. Which is why I'm calling you. I'm hoping you can dig a little deeper?"
"Yeah, I'll see what I can do. It might not be something I can handle from here. I might have to come to Winston Isles."
It was my turn to pause. I needed to tell him everything. But I also didn't need him telling the king. "Well, it's a little complicated."
"Isn’t it always with you lot?"
"Look, I know you're on the Winston Isles payroll, and you know that I would never let anything jeopardize the mission to protect the princess, but I need help, and I don't know how to get myself out of this jam."
Something changed in his voice then. It went softer, but somehow more determined. I knew Matthias had a huge hero complex. All those Blake Security guys did. If someone said they needed help, those guys went into overdrive. I hated manipulating him, but it wasn't really a manipulation. After all, I did need help and I was in a lot of trouble. Trouble I wasn't quite sure how to get out of.
"You could have called Penny."
"I could, but there’s no way I’m going to take advantage of my friendship with the queen. I need to first find a solution and then take it to Penny and Sebastian."
"Okay, shoot. What do you need?"
"A couple of weeks ago, my father called. He needed a place to stay."
"Okay."
"Well, we don't exactly have a close relationship because he is a gambler, a petty criminal, nothing major. No felonies, nothing like that, and nothing violent, obviously."
"Go on." His voice was clipped but not angry. I didn’t think so, anyway.
"I know I should have said no, but parental guilt and all that. Anyway, I said yes and gave him strict instructions to stay at my place. He wasn't to go near the palace. But checking the surveillance, I could see he went silent. About three days after he arrived, I couldn't find him. He stopped answering his phone. I asked Penny to look in on him, just in case. We didn't talk often, but he was still my dad. But he seemed to have gone dark. I was no longer seeing him going in and out of my flat. I started to worry. It's not unusual for him to just vanish, but around the same day he vanished, those files were accessed the first time. And now someone has tried again."
Another big silence. Okay, if he wasn't going to say anything else, I was going to continue. "Anyway, Jessa pulled a Houdini the other day. We’re here in London for another couple days, and then it’s back to the island. I just don’t understand what anybody was hoping to gain from her file. We know precious little about her past. And we were already here watching her, so if anything bad started to happen, we would have stopped it. But the fact that it says I accessed those files, worries me, and I can't see any further than that. Someone has set me up. I need to know who. For that, I need someone who's really good. Someone like you."
"You don't need to flatter me."
"Oh, don't worry, I wouldn't. But then, you already know how good you are."
I could practically see him shrugging. He was so nonchalant. When I first met Matthias, I’d quietly hacked his system and had almost been caught more than once. For the purpose of the meeting, my hack had helped, but any longer than that few minutes, and he would have discovered me and shut me down quick. He was that good.
"Okay, I'm going to ask the obvious. Why haven't you told Penny and Sebastian?"
"Well, I would rather fix my mess first and find out if there is a reason to panic and worry before I tell the king."
"Okay, that makes sense. But Penny is your best friend, so maybe the faster you come clean, the better. I'll help you either way, but I'm just saying you don't have to lie. Take it from someone who knows."
"I appreciate it. But I need to be clear with what the hell is going on with the old man. If he's been compromised in any way, I need some proof."
"Okay, I'll help you. But just know… you might not like how this pans out."
I sighed. "Yeah, I think I'm prepared for that."
4
Roone
"What the fuck do you mean come home?"
"Roone, this isn't a fucking suggestion, come home. It's been seventy-two hours, and you don't have her."
"If you give us more time, we would have her."
Ariel paced the living room of my flat. She was shaking her hand. "Sebastian, Your Majesty, we can leave a partial team here to keep looking for her, but I'll be perfectly honest, the trail has gone cold. She's not using her cards. Yesterday, it looks like she bought several plane tickets, one each to Madrid, Paris, Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, and one to Miami, but I don't know which flight she got on. She checked in for all the flights. So right now, anyone's guess is as good as mine. And from whichever destination she chose, she could have gone anywhere. If she has multiple passports, we can't find her that way.”
Sebastian swore. "Even more reason why you need to come home. Pull back the guards."
Ariel frowned. "With all due respect, Your Majesty, I feel like we need to leave at least a guard or two on her friend Chloe. Just in case someone tries to make a point with her."
I voiced my opinion about that idea. "Our job isn't to guard Chloe. Our job is to guard Jessa, and she's in the wind."
Ariel shut her mouth and ground her teeth together. I could practically hear them gnashing.
This was fucking bullshit. "Okay, well, you can call Ariel home, but I'm not coming."
There was a bit of silence on the line, and I could tell Sebastian was frustrated with me. But I really didn't give a shit. "Roone, I get it. You want to do your best, but there’s nothing to be done there. It's time to come back. We'll regroup as a team."
"I'm not abandoning her. If I have to go to each of those destinations and poke around, check in with contacts, then I will."
"Roone, this is a direct order."
"Oh, is it?" It was rare that he ever gave me one of those. "Well then, you're going to need to wait. I have some time off coming. Maybe it's time I took it."
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
That was a good question. I'd fucked up. Jessa was running around without protection because I hadn’t just ignored the order and told her who I was. But how had she found out? At the end of the day, it didn't matter. She'd been scared, and she'd chosen to shoot me with a tranquilizer instead of bullets, for which I was very appreciative.
But, I couldn't go back, not without finishing the job. I would get Ariel to run one of her fancy-schmancy predictive algorithms on where Jessa might have gone, and then I'd start there.
"Honestly, if the order is come home, then I'm going on vacation."
" This is the time to choose to go on vacation?"
"You know I've always wanted to check out Rome. Toronto too."
"Roone, stop being a dick."
"You stop being a dick."
When we fought, we tended to deteriorate into our secondary school versions of ourselves.
"You did your best."
"I beg to differ. If I'd done my best, she would be here, safe. Even better, she'd be back in the islands with the full guard around her. Instead, she's somewhere in the world completely alone. And that's on me."
Ariel shook her head. "No, I take responsibility. I was leading the team."
I knew what Ariel was doing. She was trying to deflect, take the heat off of me. But I knew what I'd done. "No, it’s my fuck up. I have to fix it. One way or another, I'm not coming home yet."
Sebastian sighed. "Roone, she isn't your
responsibility. She's mine."
"If you say so, Your Majesty. But I'm taking a vacation."
Sebastian cursed under his breath. "Take me off speaker."
I took the phone off speaker and put it up to my ear. When he spoke, his voice was low. "Stop blaming yourself."
"I'm not." Ariel left the room, presumably to give us privacy. "Look, give me a few days. I'll chase down the leads, see what I can come up with. If I come up with nothing, then I'll do as you ask and come home. But I have to try, Sebastian. I feel responsible."
He sighed. "This is Lucas all over again."
"No, it's not."
"Yes, it is. You were obsessed with finding him too."
Yeah, I had been obsessed with finding Lucas, but the difference was I hadn't fucking fallen for Lucas. But I wasn't going to tell Sebastian that. "This just goes to show it seems I can't always do my job right."
"I know you're going to take on this responsibility, but it's not yours to bear. Just do what you need to do and come home."
"Roger that. And I'm not coming home without her."
"For all our sakes, I hope you do find her."
Jessa…
A girls’ night… with my sister-in-law… the queen. And my future sister-in-law. Oh, just NBD.
For the most part, I'd had few friends, enough for a girls’ night, but no real crowd. But after just a few days on the island, I had a group. One where I felt like I belonged.
Minor detail… they had no idea who I really was. And yes, I knew that just because Roone had done it to me didn’t mean that I should do it back to them. It was dishonest and cruel.
But I was having fun. Honest to goodness fun. And if everything went right, they would never know.
We’d had drinks at Jinx and Bryna's followed by a limo ride. I peered out of the window. "Where are we going?"
Penny laughed. "We're going to go enjoy the movie theater at the palace."
Shit. My mouth hung open. "What?"
"Yeah. After a variety of incidents, I am no longer allowed to go to a movie theater like a normal person, so I have to see them in the palace. If these guys want to see a movie with me, off to the palace we go."
I glanced around. "You guys realize that's weird, right?"
Bryna laughed. "Yeah, it's weird. But the theater at the palace is amazing. Once you go private butler, there is no going back."
Jinx grinned. "Also, it’s free. And I can have as much popcorn as I want."
Penny shrugged. "There are some perks. The least of which is that I will be able to sit in my comfy pajamas and watch the latest rom com. I'm for it."
I swallowed hard. What were the odds I’d be able to make it out of there with no one the wiser? Yes, I wanted to scope out the royals, but not like this… not where I could be caught and shoved in a dungeon.
"Well, I guess off to the palace we go then." Internally, I was shooting myself. Oh sure, I knew enough to laugh and smile with the others. Tonight had been fun and illuminating. I found out more about Penny than I ever thought I would need or want to know.
It turned out she was an artist, actually a decent one, too. But as a queen now, it wasn't like she could really sell her art. She was also a Royal Guard, and that story had me fascinated. Because how did one go from artist to Royal Guard, and how in the world did that work with being queen? From what she'd said, it had been a challenge.
My brother apparently didn’t want her to be a Royal Guard. But they’d worked out some kind of arrangement where she wasn't supposed to go out in the field any longer. Although from the sounds of it, I thought a part of her missed it.
"I had no idea when I brought over your lipstick that I would be rubbing shoulders with royalty. I didn't know that was a thing that could happen."
Penny laughed. "Well, welcome. It's not that glamorous, honestly. Just an old building."
"Well, it's glamorous to me," I muttered. The car pulled up to a gate that automatically opened and then drove up the winding drive toward the palace. It grew dark inside the limo, and finally, the car came to a stop and opened up in what looked like actual tunnels.
"Are you guys leading me to slaughter in the dungeon something? Because I have to tell you I did not sign up for that."
Bryna laughed. "Oh relax. There are no dungeons, supposedly. I've never gotten a straight answer on that."
I blinked. "Wow, you are just filling me with confidence."
Jinx laughed. "How do you think I feel? I live with her. And any number of days, I have random men in my house."
Bryna whacked her on the shoulder. "Jinx. That makes it sound so dirty."
"Well, it’s true. You have a guard detail now. So, it's not like you have the same guy over and over."
"Yes, but you might want to explain that before you suggest that I just have random dudes in my house all the time."
Jinx giggled. "Well okay, good point."
The doors were opened for us, and we all shuffled in. I tried to take in every little thing. I expected ornate tapestries and marble floors, but it looked like the lobby of a hotel, honestly. Marble floors, yes, polished to a high shine, but no tapestries. There were chandeliers, but they were dim and muted, until we went to a hallway on the left. Ah, there was a tapestry, and an angel scene was painted in rich colors on the ceiling. A white polished marble floor and gilded posts between the arches completed the look. It was absolutely incredible.
I was so busy looking around that I paid zero attention to which way we were going. I would need an escort back out.
Are you sure you want an escort out of here? You could stay forever. You could meet the king.
Penny led the way and pushed open a set of double doors that led to the biggest media room I'd ever seen. It actually looked like a theater, which made it all the more incredible. "Holy shit."
Penny turned and smiled at me. "I know, right? I think that was my response exactly. I grew up here for the most part, but I never came here for movies or anything."
I frowned. "You grew up in the palace?"
"My father’s been head of security for the family for a long time. So, I grew up in a bungalow a quarter of a mile away on the palace grounds."
That was fascinating. Sebastian’s and her lives were so intertwined before they ever fell in love. "That must have been incredible. And I’m guessing lonely too."
"Lonely. There was a lot of that. But growing up in and around the palace was kind of fun. I had a great time. There are all these tunnels with secret nooks and crannies, and it was pretty great sometimes."
We all picked a seat, and Penny made a call for popcorn. Jinx made a request for her kettle corn mix, and we settled in. When the door opened, we all turned. I’d assumed it would be the concessions, but instead, it was the one person I didn't expect to see.
My brother.
His gaze landed on Penny first, and while they were engrossed in each other, I watched him.
Is he everything you imagined?
I guess so. More, maybe? He was tall. Lean. There was no softness to him though. I didn't imagine he sat behind the desk all day. There was something about him, something self-assured. Like he was well aware of what he looked like and how he carried himself, a natural-born leader who exuded confidence like he’d grown up with it and never questioned his place in the world. He had dark brown hair, and the curls slightly framed his face. His eyes were maybe hazel. I couldn't tell for sure, not in the dim lighting.
But, that smile. The way he looked at Penny made my gut clench. He loved her. It was apparent on his face and the way his eyes lit up as if she hung the moon and the stars.
Wow. I didn't know anything about him, but I could have just seen that one look and it would have told me everything about him. He was capable of great love.
Yeah, but will that love extend to you?
He dipped his head to kiss Penny, and immediately Bryna and Jinx protested.
"Eeww..."
"Oh my God, you two, get a room."
I
giggled, wondering what could be so bad about Sebastian kissing Penny. And then I understood as that one kiss turn into a second that lingered. And then Sebastian dipped his hand into her hair and looked like he wanted to stay there a while.
Wow, okay yeah. That was a little too gooey.
And then he looked up, kissed her on the nose, and then flipped off Bryna and Jinx, who only laughed.
"Don't worry, I'm leaving. I just came to kiss my wife. That's all."
When he turned our gazes locked. I knew logically there was no way we should have known each other, no reason why I should feel like he could see into me. Nonetheless, I could feel it. I knew him.
I refused to look away. I refused to speak first either.
But what if he has no idea who you are?
He smiled hesitantly, and then turned his attention back to Penny, who shrugged. When his gaze returned to mine, he started to speak and then cleared his throat and tried it again. "What are you doing here?"
"I—" I frowned, glancing around at Bryna and Jinx. I couldn't see Penny because he was blocking her. "Uh, Bryna and Jinx invited me to hang out?"
His gaze darted back to them then back to me. He stepped forward then hesitated.
Penny stood then and stepped around him. "I'm so sorry Jessa. I hope you'll forgive our mild deception, but I got the impression you wanted to meet your brother. And I didn't tell him you were coming, so you'll have to forgive his current state."
My gaze darted to her. "You knew?"
Jinx stood then. "Yeah, we recognized you right away."
Could I run? Would I make it back to the limo? And if I did, then what? Ask Jeeves to fire it up so I could make my escape? Are they going to kill me?
"You guys are as bad as Roone."
Sebastian's brows lifted. "Roone. You knew?"
"A little too late."
Before I could say anything else, the door to the theater opened again.
Brother number two.
Lucas had a big grin for everyone. "I heard my fiancée, my future baby mama, was here."
Bryna just shook her head. "Not now, Lucas."
