Chapter 24 – Marcella
MARCELLA
Once I’m dressed, he picks leaves and debris from my hair, and I help remove the remaining pieces from my braid, only to undo it and re-plait it.
“Presentable?” I ask once I’m finished. He grabs me by the nape of my neck and hauls me in for a final toe-curling kiss.
“Perfect. Now get your adorable ass to work.” He spins me around and spanks me, and I jump forward with a yelp. But there’s no stopping my smile. There’s no stopping the skip of my heart.
I leave Rowan behind and head toward the palace, skirting around the pool where I hear the children splashing. The afternoon is spread out before me, and I get back to it, anxious to make sure there are no issues and check in with the staff.
Marsha is in the hall when I pass through the servants’ wings. I’m in no mood for her. My plate is already full, and she looks like she wants to add on a buffet.
She gives me a sneering look, and I mentally sigh. “Have something to say?” I question.
“Nope,” she sasses. “Other than you’re going down.”
“Uh-huh. Spare me the ’90s teen drama quotes. Did you do your work?”
“I always do my work. Better than you do. You never should have been promoted to this job.”
I give her an indifferent shrug. “That’s not how Emily felt. And I know it’s you, Esme, and Raul who have been messing with things, changing orders and schedules and dirtying up rooms once I’ve finished cleaning them.”
She snorts a laugh. “Why would we bother messing with anything of yours? I hardly even think about you.”
“Uh-huh,” I repeat.
She huffs. “It’s not my fault you’re incompetent, and it’s finally coming out for others to see, including the king.”
“Right. When I catch you, you’ll be fired.
” I liked the idea of killing her, but she’s not worth having more blood on my hands.
Five people. I’ve killed five people at the command of Signoria Batorini.
Two of those were at the encouragement of Samil.
They were evil people who did evil deeds—or so I was told, or saw when I did my recon on them.
Still, I have to live with that. Marsha’s not worth being number six.
“You don’t have that authority. I know you don’t. Besides, Emily returns tomorrow, and with that, everything is going to change. Especially when I tell her what’s been happening.”
“We’ll see. Until then.” I give her my back, walking away and dismissing her.
“You won’t be here long,” she yells after me as if she has to get the last word in.
That’s my plan.
“I’m not the only one who’s been upset with your work.”
I turn back to her before I reach the hall that will take me toward my room.
I need to change. I can feel the dirt and grime on me.
“The sad thing about you, Marsha? It didn’t have to be this way.
You could’ve stayed my friend. All three of you could have.
You could’ve helped me with all of this, but you didn’t.
You chose to be my enemies. And for what?
Because I got the job and you didn’t? Grow up.
It’s temporary, but memories aren’t. And I will remember this. ”
“Ooh, I’m so scared.” She smirks, rolling her eyes dramatically at me. “Real fucking scary, aren’t you?”
I give her the same sadistic grin I learned from Signoria and Antonia. “You have no clue.”
I continue toward the servants’ area, listening as they finish up lunch.
I enter the room smiling at everybody and checking in.
Briefly, we go over afternoon assignments and any concerns anyone has.
No one else seems bothered by my role. Everyone is greeting me with kind smiles and helpful suggestions.
After I’m done, I change out of my gross clothes and into something clean and dry, then head upstairs to the room where Emily is going to be coming home tomorrow.
My mind is racing, stuck in the woods, on the video of Jaqueline, completely lost in thought.
I have to get into the king’s computer before Javier and Emily return home.
It has to be tonight.
I don’t see Rowan for the rest of the day, and he doesn’t come to my room tonight.
I’m grateful. As it is, I’m wound too tight, and if I saw him right now, I’m not sure how I’d respond.
What I’m about to do doesn’t sit well with me.
Quite the opposite, actually. I don’t want to do this, but if I don’t, if I don’t go in and at least look and see what’s going on, then not only will Jacqueline suffer, but I’ll never know the truth about Samil.
The problem is, I don’t know what I’m hoping for. The king’s guilt or the king’s innocence.
I’m not planting anything tonight. Signoria has whatever she wants me to put on his computer, and I’d have to meet up with her to get it. Tonight is simply recon.
I don’t have access to the main cameras anymore, so everything I’m doing right now is a risk. And if anyone happens to be monitoring the cameras tonight, they’ll catch me instantly, and I’ll be put in jail, or perhaps the dungeons downstairs.
The king’s study is on the second floor, and I know from my earlier recon after I moved into the palace that he goes to bed late.
Or should I say he goes to bed with his wife, then goes to his study later.
I don’t know what he does in there. All I know is that he’s in there usually late into the night.
The darkness of the palace surrounds me, the air thick and heavy with electricity and humidity from the storm outside that finally broke the summer heat.
It’s eerie. I’ve never quite believed in ghosts or scary stories before—certainly not the curse—but for the first time, I feel a presence around me.
The creepy paintings with eyes that follow me aren’t helping that.
Outside, rain is coming down in sheets, the drops pelleting the windows, making me even more jumpy than I already am.
I slink up through the back stairs, my footsteps silent.
It’s been a long time since I’ve snuck around, not just the palace but in general, with the intent of doing evil deeds.
The halls are empty. No one is around. The attendant sitting at his post in front of the cameras is face deep in his book, with only a small light to read by.
I slip past him through the shadows, and he doesn’t even so much as twitch or look up.
It’s late, and as I reach the second floor. The grandfather clock sounds, startling me half to death. It pings one chime after the other, one, two, all the way up to twelve. Midnight.
I steady myself and continue on, prowling along the walls, mindful of where the cameras are, at least the ones that I’ve been able to note.
I round the corner and pad to the junction where the floor branches off to the offices.
For a moment, I stand stock-still, plastered against the stone wall, listening.
There’s no sound. The king’s study is straight ahead of me, and I don’t distinguish any light coming from beneath the heavy wood door.
I release a silent breath, roll my shoulders back, and move with purpose, on the edge of no return. My hands tremble ever so slightly, and I shake them out, pushing my nerves aside and quelling the adrenaline fighting to be set free. It won’t help me. No second thoughts. No second-guessing.
I have to do this.
I roll my body up to the door and press softly against it.
It’s closed but not locked, and I twist the knob and let myself in, then slowly close it behind me with the tiniest of clicks.
Lightning flashes across the sky, momentarily illuminating the room.
It’s closely followed by a loud clap of thunder that rattles the windowpanes.
I need to be fast.
A storm like this will wake people.
This would be so much easier if the king’s laptop were in his office, but when I did evening rounds, I saw it was in here instead.
The laptop is sitting closed on the table in the back corner of the room.
It’s connected to two monitors, and I remove the connection because they’ll cause too much light.
I don’t know the king’s password, but I don’t need it to get into his system.
I’m skilled enough to use other techniques to bypass it and gain access, which is what I do all the while throwing cursory glances at the door.
I do a quick search through the king’s most recent files, meeting notes, governmental emails, and drafted letters.
I dig through his finances, and though I don’t have hours or more like days to spend doing this, nothing appears to be out of order at first glance.
There are no large sums of money moved anywhere.
No offshore accounts. Nothing that jumps out and screams sketchy or illegal.
I realize this is his personal laptop, and he could store these things elsewhere.
In fact, only an idiot would keep them on their personal computer, where anyone could gain access.
The king is a lot of things, but he’s not an idiot.
But as I’m digging, I uncover a folder in a private section titled S.B., the same letters I use for Signoria Batorini, though I already know it’s about Samil.
My heart hammers, making my throat tight. I check the door again, then click on it.
The file is loaded with at least a hundred different items, ranging from documents to video files, the dates going back months to years. Samil became the prime minister roughly a year after Nora died.
At the time, his grief was consuming, and I remember asking him why he was running at all, plastering on a fake smile for the cameras and gladhanding contributors.
“One word,” he said. “Revenge.”
That was it, but I understood.
After he won the election, he didn’t come home often, needing to stay in the capital for business, but we texted frequently, and on random nights, he’d call and talk for hours.
Endless rants about King Sebastian. About how crooked he was.
How he wished the curse would come and take him already.
How bad he was for the kingdom. How untouchable he was in this palace, locked away with the children.
Endless tirades that fed an already poisoned well inside me.
I start with the documents, scrolling through the list of Samil’s financial statements.
All of these were obtained after his death, likely as part of an investigation.
One particular document catches my eye, and I click on it, my brow furrowing as I scroll through line by line.
It’s a list of names, and next to them are monetary amounts and bank account numbers.
Each of the sums is different, but not small by any measure.
After that is a notation of a correspondence date.
I take a picture with my phone and go back to the documents to search.
One by one, I find the people linked to each dollar amount. And what I discover chills me to my bones and has me staring at the screen, reading and rereading to make sure I have it right.
Each is a text message conversation logged from Samil’s cell phone or emails he sent, all from the same IP address that’s pinpointed on here as Samil’s residence.
But that’s not what’s rattling me. They’re bribes.
Bribes offered to engage the king in shady business deals.
Bribes to parliament members to vote against the king on laws and policies.
Payments for attacking or kidnapping Bellamy and/or the children.
Payments if they’re able to get to the king himself.
Some of them are proposals or inquiries. Some of them, especially the bribes, were transactions.
I don’t know how to make sense of this. Of the things he told me versus the things I’m seeing here.
King Sebastian never made any of this public.
And he could have. He could have said, “Not only did the prime minister try to kill my future queen and me but look at all the evil he was attempting to do.”
He didn’t.
And the only reason I can come up with is for the betterment of his country that was in deep turmoil after the assassination attempt and Samil’s death.
On the flip side, Samil told me time and time again that the king was crooked. That the king was a liar. That he took bribes. That he was bad for the kingdom. How it was his job as the prime minister to stop him. That the king went after Nora simply to hurt him because he was jealous and spiteful.
But if he were spiteful, wouldn’t he have posted all of Samil’s wrongdoing?
Did Samil realize that the king wasn’t any of those things, and in the absence of evil, did he work to construct it? Was all that orchestrated? His own attempt at a cover-up for his crimes or was it simply the madness and obsession of a broken man?
Looking at this, looking at these files, looking at some of those bank accounts and registries, it’s not the king who was working bribes. It’s not the king who was crooked.
It was the prime minister.
I don’t know how to make heads or tails of this. I don’t know how to compartmentalize or make sense of what I’m reading. Why would Samil lie to me? Why would he tell me all these things about the king if they weren’t true?
Floored, I lean back in the chair and rub a weary hand over my forehead and across my mouth.
I feel as though I’ve been rubbed raw with sea salt and left in the blazing sun to bake.
I know Samil hated him. I know how venomous he was.
But nothing he told me about the king was real, even as Samil tried to make it so.
Shaking my head, utterly gobsmacked, and frankly feeling ransacked and betrayed, I go on to the next file, and the next, and the next.
It’s more of the same. Samil trying to create crimes and pin them on the king.
Samil trying to hurt the king. Samil trying to hurt Bellamy and the children. The fucking children.
He offered to pay a man fifty thousand euros if he killed all three of them at the holiday ball and made it look like an accident. That was the night he took Bellamy. That was the night he died.
My insides churn with sick turmoil, and bile climbs up the back of my throat.
Bellamy was right. He wanted them dead. All of them. Fresh sweat coats my forehead. All these years, all these lies, all the reasons I’m here...
I don’t know how to make sense of this. Samil, my brother, my protector, the reason I’m still alive and breathing. He kept me safe. He cared when no one else did. I love him. I love him so fucking much.
But I don’t know how to handle this.
Was it purely based on his jealousy? Was this simply his way of trying to get Sebastian out of the picture?
Was everything a lie?
And if it was, what does that mean for me?