Chapter 28 – Rowan
ROWAN
The drive to France is long and interminably boring.
It’s not exactly like I can do this alone as my own recon mission.
I’m the prince of Messalina, and therefore I require security with me at all times.
Technically we’re also not supposed to drive ourselves.
I have, and so has Sebastian on occasion, but it’s rare and, for this, not permissible.
So it’s me sitting in the back seat, drinking coffee and thinking about her.
About all the things Sebastian and I spoke about this morning.
I feel better for having told him, but I also realized my reasoning for not initially telling him was bullshit.
I kept saying it was my responsibility to handle or that he had enough on his mind with Bellamy, the children, and the curse.
Thinking about it now, that’s not true.
I was afraid of his reaction. I was afraid he’d arrest her or tell me unequivocally that I couldn’t watch her or touch her. Truthfully, I’m shocked he didn’t, but despite my desires, and possibly my fucking heart, I couldn’t leave for who knows how long with a potential danger lurking in the mist.
But with that, I also need to dig deeper and harder. I need to uncover her secrets and the reason why she snuck into the wedding and now works in the palace. What happened to her last night that drove her over the edge?
My eyes close, and I replay the events as they unfolded. She wasn’t in her room. It was the middle of the night. She also didn’t have her phone—either phone—on her because when we came upstairs, I brought her into the shower and undressed her, and it wasn’t with her.
So what the fuck happened?
I could pull up the cameras, but the palace is massive—seventy-five thousand square meters with over seven hundred and fifty rooms. Without knowing where she was last night, it would mean a lot of searching, and not all of the rooms have cameras in them.
It’s mostly the halls with the exception of the main rooms, several parlors, the library, the solarium, and other random areas.
Private spaces don’t have cameras in them for obvious reasons.
I blow out a breath and sink back against the seat, my eyes heavy and my mind foggy. All too soon, Gabe, my lead security, clears his throat, and I wake with a small start.
“Sorry, sir. We’re here.”
I blink, wiping the sleep from my eyes, and glance toward the window. We’re on the outskirts of a French town not far from the Messalina border. It has the appearance of a suburb with rows of homes on neat streets.
Marie was here? That seems…odd.
I pictured her hiding in places like the cottage where the onesie and blanket were found.
Then again, she doesn’t know we’re chasing her.
She has no clue we know she’s the one who took Desta because we never announced the fingerprints we lifted from the newspaper clipping.
The only ones who know about that are Sebastian, Javier, Bellamy, Emily, Althea, and me.
It’s been over twenty years since that night.
Maybe she’s finally starting to let her guard down.
The SUV stops in front of the address the local police gave us.
There’s a perimeter of crime scene tape linked from tree to tree.
I scoot to the door and glance around the neighborhood.
There’s a woman up the block with a stroller and an elderly couple on the other end walking a dog.
A few houses down, a gardener is mowing the lawn.
It’s as regular a world as it gets, and yet the woman who took my baby sister was here.
It makes me murderous.
She has no right to live when Desta likely isn’t.
The door opens for me, and I step out, squinting against the blinding sunlight. I pull my sunglasses out of my pocket so I can slip them on. We’re getting curious looks, and whether or not people recognize me remains to be seen. Right now, we simply appear like special police with our black SUV.
A police cruiser pulls up and parks in the driveway.
I scoot under the line of yellow tape, and two uniformed officers greet me halfway up the walkway.
“Your Highness,” they both say, going to bow when I stop them.
“Please don’t. I appreciate the gesture, but I’d rather not draw unnecessary attention.”
“Of course, sir,” one says.
I reach out and shake their hands, which surprises them, but they’re letting me in here when they could just as fast tell me to fuck off.
It is a crime scene. Someone broke into the house through a back entry point.
The tenets were away on holiday when it happened.
It’s a rental, and the owners have several properties they manage.
“Thank you for letting me view the home today. Was anything taken?” I question.
“Not that the residents are reporting, Your Highness,” the other officer states.
My brows knit. “Has anyone else entered the home?”
“Just the crime investigation unit, the homeowner, and residents, who were escorted by us, and we made sure nothing was touched. The residents are, as you can imagine, anxious to return home. We haven’t told them of your involvement, and after your visit today, we’re going to allow them to return.”
“Right then.” Who breaks into a home, likely knowing that the occupants are away, and takes nothing? “Shall we go in?”
They nod and lead me up the front steps to unlock the door for me.
It’s a quaint home from the outside, but the inside is a different experience and immediately raises new questions.
The furnishings are high-end, and the electronics, including the large television, are top of the line.
The lounge leads into a kitchen that would make Margarite, our chef, jealous.
On and on it goes. A home gym with state-of-the-art equipment, an office with monitors and computers that must cost a fortune. I open drawers and closets and anything I can think of. They don’t stop me.
“This is quite the home to steal nothing from,” I state.
“Yes, sir. We can’t figure it out either. Neither can the residents.”
“What do they do for a living?”
“Software engineers, I believe. They’re two brothers.”
Hmm. Okay. Gabe throws me a dubious look.
“And you’re positive the fingerprints match the person in your database?”
“Yes,” the first officer tells me. “It was double-checked.”
“But they don’t belong to the homeowner or tenants?”
He glances at his partner but shakes his head. “No. The fingerprints in question weren’t discovered in the house. They came from a back fence leading to the home of the people who called in the break-in.”
Weird. So she likely put on gloves before entering.
“How did she get in?”
“Through the back door,” Officer Two answers. “She picked the lock.”
No alarm. No cameras.
I continue on, visually scouring the home as I head upstairs. There are three bedrooms, but only two are being used as a place to sleep. The third bedroom has a sofa, but that’s it. Or at least that’s how it appears until you open the closet.
“Did the police or tenants come in here at all?”
The officer who came upstairs with me clears his throat. “Um, no, sir, we didn’t. It's a practically empty room, and neither the homeowners nor the tenants came in here.”
My head twists over my shoulder to him. “The tenants who had their home broken into didn’t come into this room and open the closet to check on their safe after someone broke into their home?”
He looks almost sheepish. “No. They didn’t.”
I turn back to the professional-looking safe that’s sitting ajar. She cracked it. There are no markings on it or evidence of forcible entry. “Fascinating.” I can’t see what’s inside. “Perhaps you should dust for fingerprints?”
“Yes. Smart. Let me go get the kit. I’ll be right back.”
He leaves me like the fool he is, and I don’t waste a moment before I put on my own gloves and open the safe door. And what I see inside makes me gasp and reach for it without thinking. It’s tucked in the back, off to the corner, but it’s impossible to miss with daylight streaming all over it.
It’s not Desta’s tiara, but it appears at first glance to be a diamond from it.
Not one of the large diamonds that we already found, but one of the smaller diamonds.
I remember what the tiara looked like, and we looked at pictures of it again when we found the loose diamond.
This is one of the heart stones from the center ring. I’m positive of it.
It’s pink, about ten carats, and rare.
Similar to the stone Bellamy wears around her neck, only this one is bigger.
Other than that, the safe is empty save for a few scattered hundred-euro notes. The house was robbed, but the thief knew exactly what they were coming for, where to find it, and how to get it.
I return the door to how I found it and remove my gloves.
A moment later, both officers, along with Gabe, are in the room, and I stand back. He shouldn’t have let me stay in here. That’s an error on their part, but this isn’t my country, and frankly, I don’t care about their crime scene. There won’t be fingerprints anywhere on the safe.
Was the tiara here to start with, and a stone simply fell out of it as it had before?
Or was Marie coming for loose stones? How did these people get it in the first place?
Marie was hasty. She didn’t put gloves on until she got into the backyard.
She left the safe ajar and some money still in it. She also left the diamond.
It was a smash-and-grab job, but with more skill than an average thief would have. The police think she was in and out in under five minutes.
It’s not the first time she’s made mistakes. The only reason we found her is because she left the discarded baby items in the old cottage along with the newspaper clippings. Likely because she had to flee quickly. But as with everything lately, I have more questions than answers.
The police inspect the safe and dust for prints. Go them. I stay back and keep my mouth shut until we get back outside the home again.
“Thank you for your help, officers.” I shake both their hands and give them my charming prince smile.
“I appreciate it, and so does my country. I’ll be sure to call your captain and thank him for all the diligent work you both have done on this case and your invaluable service.
I don’t think there’s much more for me here, so our part in this is done. ”
Otherwise known as please have the tenants return so I can watch them as best I can and learn more about them.
It could be a long few days for me.