Chapter 30 – Rowan
ROWAN
“Software engineers, my ass,” I grumble, staring out the passenger window of a nondescript car from three houses down. “Gabe, tell me something.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you had your home broken into, and the only thing ransacked in your ridiculous place was your safe that held a very specific diamond, would you be throwing a party right now?”
“No, sir.”
“Didn’t think so.”
I sent the diamond to our special investigation unit.
They’re the ones who identified the bloody onesie, the blanket, and the diamond from the tiara.
But I took a picture of it and sent it to Sebastian, and he just about lost his mind.
He wanted to come join me here, but he knows he can’t with Bellamy being so close to the end of her pregnancy, Emily just returning home, and Marcella being there.
“There.” He points. “Look.”
I watch as someone steps onto the front porch, smoking what looks to be a joint and talking on the phone.
“Fuck. Why didn’t we bug the house?”
“Because the police were with us.”
“Right. Them. Incompetent twits that they are. Thank God.”
If they hadn’t been, we might not have the diamond without anyone knowing about it. If word had leaked about that or our involvement, it would have set us back and likely wouldn’t be as far along as we are.
Gabe takes pictures of him, but even with our windows down, we can’t hear.
We’d have to get out of the car and attempt to sneak close enough to listen, but with the tight proximity of the homes to the street—and to each other—there’s no way that would work.
This is the sort of neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else’s business.
“We should interview the neighbors.”
“They’re being paid off.”
I turn to him. “You think?”
He gives me a what do you think look and then nods back over at Smokey Joe getting higher than Everest. No one is calling the police. No one is complaining about the noise of the party in this residential neighborhood on a weeknight.
“If that’s so, then why did the back neighbor ring the police?” I ask, rubbing at my jaw as I think this through. “Do we know?”
Gabe stops taking pictures and goes into some sort of crazy app he has on his phone. Likely something illegal that’s hacked into the police, but I don’t care, and I don’t ask.
“They phoned at midnight that a person wearing all black terrorized their dog when it barked at them, and that they saw them walking through their backyard, opening their gate, and then entering the house through the back door. She said her neighbors were out of town and she was concerned.”
“Hmm. So she knew that they were away and called the police. Do we know where these people were?”
“I’d need my computer for that, sir.”
“That’s your mission for tonight or tomorrow before we return.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Gabe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know I hate it when you call me that, right?”
His lips bounce, the whites of his eyes gleaming against his dark skin. “Yes, sir.”
“Fucking asshole.”
He laughs. If Marcella has taught me anything, it’s that people who don’t want to be found aren’t.
We looked into her. It became part of my obsession, and it turned up dead end after dead end, almost as if she didn’t exist. If someone is smart and has resources, they can evade almost anyone.
But these people aren’t in the shadows. They’re right here, in everyone’s face, loud and obnoxious with zero fucks to give about any of it.
They were robbed. An untold amount of cash was taken. A priceless diamond—and possibly the tiara—was too, along with who knows what else. Yet these people don’t have a care in the world. Why?
“Tomorrow we speak to that neighbor. Not me, obviously, but you.”
He chuckles. “Yes, sir. I know the drill.”
“Why would people like this not have any home security? No door cameras, no alarm. They had a lock that was easily picked and a safe that was cracked. That’s all.”
“Arrogance, maybe.”
“Or perhaps they thought no one would be dumb enough to try to rob them.”
The prince of Messalina has to appear as though he’s on some holiday that wealthy playboy princes take.
Even when in suburban France. With that, we’re staying fifty kilometers from the house at a luxury hotel.
They’ve been annoyingly gracious and perfectly imperfect with their fastidious service.
I want to be left alone. I want to be inconspicuous.
No such luck.
They’ve brought me champagne and chocolate-covered fruit and nuts and fucking mini cupcakes. Since we returned here for dinner, I’ve had three people knock on my door with various items. I’m gracious. I tip well. But fuck off!
I shoo the last person away, take a shower, then climb into bed. It doesn’t take a genius to know where my thoughts gather, and I don’t stop myself when I pick up my phone and press her number for a FaceTime.
The call is declined, and I swear to fucking God, that woman is getting the best spanking of her life when I get back.
I call her again. Then again. Finally on the fourth call, she picks up, but it’s not her face I see.
“Do you have the phone stuffed into your blanket?”
“My pillow. Why are you calling me?”
“Marcella, I don’t even know your fucking middle name, Russo, let me see your pretty face or I’ll have Althea come down to your room, and trust me when I tell you, my aunt does not like to be up past nine, and here we are close to ten.”
“I was sleeping.”
A pang of guilt hits me. “Were you?”
“Trying to.”
“I’m sorry. Let me see you, then I’ll let you go to sleep.”
The picture shifts, and she’s there, on her side in the dark. A smile hits my lips, and my finger glides along the screen.
Fuck, the way my chest clenches and my heart flutters. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she replies even as she works to hide her smile. “Why are you FaceTiming me on my work phone?”
“Because your piece of shit regular phone is so old it doesn’t have that capability. Come to think of it, I don’t know the number for it.”
I get an eye roll. “You know what I meant.”
“I didn’t want to go a whole day without seeing you.”
She releases a breath, her cheeks pinking up, but I don’t want her to withdraw, so I keep going.
“Tell me about the palace.”
She licks her lips. “Emily came home. She was in some pain, and everyone fussed over her.”
My fingers continue to run over the phone, tracing her face. “I’m positive she hated that.”
I get a small, crooked smile as she shifts, treating me to the best angle ever. I prop my phone up against the wall behind the desk I’m sitting at, flip to a new page, and start sketching.
“Stop drawing me.”
“Never. I see your face when I close my eyes, and whenever that happens with something, I have to draw it. I drew you this morning when you were still sound asleep in my bed.”
“Your Highness—”
“Rowan,” I correct as my hand continues to move, my eyes bouncing back and forth between the paper and the screen.
A huff. “Prince, what you’re doing with me isn’t smart. This has to stop.”
“So you like to say, and yet here we are.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Please don’t. I want to look at you for a bit longer. Talk to you. Pretend. Maybe even imagine.”
“Imagine what?”
“That the world isn’t as complex as it seems. That you’re simply a woman I met and I’m just a guy and this isn’t as impossible as it feels. I don’t want it to be impossible. I want what I feel when I look at you to never stop.”
Her eyes glass over, and she shifts again, pressing her head deeper into her pillow to hide it. “And what’s that?”
“Hope. Excitement. Lust. Derangement.” Love.
I won’t say it, and I barely allow myself to think it because it seems too soon and too insane, but it creeps into those dark, unruly recesses all the same.
It’s impossible for it to be that. I don’t know her.
There are all these things that make her everything I need to stay away from.
But the thought is there. A truth that resonates through me and doesn’t care about all the other bullshit.
I can’t leave her alone. I think about her night and day. My moments are consumed with her.
She giggles, the sound like music. “You are definitely that last one, Your Highness.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t like me too.”
She rolls her eyes. “Good night.”
“Will you sing for me?” I don’t want her to hang up. Searching for Marie fucks with me. The diamond I found is fucking with me. I feel like I’m chasing ghosts, and when I get to the end of this—if I ever get there—I’m positive it will be with heartbreak.
I don’t like to think about the curse because it’s entirely out of my control.
My nieces and nephew are my life. My brother is the only true family I have—other than Althea, but she’s not of our royal bloodline—because our mother has little if anything to do with us.
Bellamy is pregnant with twins, and the fear—the chronic fucking fear—keeps me up.
I want to fix everything, and I don’t know how, so looking at Marcella and drawing her and listening to her is a tonic to my ravaged soul.
She might prove to be the biggest curse of all, and maybe this is all part of it. The beautiful angel of death coming to claim its next victim—me. But I’d rather be destroyed by her than continue in the gray nothingness.
“Sing?” Her brows pinch in confusion as if I spoke to her in ancient Greek.
“Yes, my enchanting siren. I want you to sing something for me.”
“And jump to your death?”
I laugh, my hand continuing to move across the thick sketch paper. It’s as if she were reading my mind. “If that’s how it goes, there are worse ways for a man to die than at your hands.”
Her face pinches up for a flicker of a second before she evens it out and asks, “Sing what?”
“Anything. Your favorite song that you like to sing.”
“I don’t know a lot of songs. I only know what I grew up hearing.”
I already figured that out, which is why she’ll fight me on some of the things I’m sending her.
“I don’t care. Pick something. Make it up if you have to.”
Again to my surprise, she opens those full lips, and her voice is set free. It’s incredible and sends chills racing up my spine. I don’t know the song. It’s some Italian thing, but she could be singing me the history of Messalina straight from one of the old tomes in my study, and I wouldn’t mind.
She finishes the song, and I’m in some sort of trance state. My hand even stopped moving, and I hate that it did because I missed so much and could have drawn incredible things.
“You are so beautiful, Marcella. You make the sun rise even on the gloomiest day.”
The phone pulls away from her face, and I’m stuck back in the darkness. “Don’t say things like that to me. I should hang up on you. I never should have answered.”
Yeah, yeah, blah, blah. I don’t know who she’s trying to convince with that routine, me or her. This is why I think she doesn’t want to hurt us. This is why I think she’s running from a past that won’t let her go or is being manipulated by a hand wrapped around her neck.
“I’m sending you some stuff,” I tell her.
And I’m back, this time treated with her annoyed scowl. “What stuff?”
“Stuff.” But there’s no hiding my smirk.
“I don’t need you to buy me things.”
“I know. I did it for me because it makes me happy.”
She snorts a laugh. “Such a selfish, self-indulged prince.”
“The worst sort.” I sit up straighter, the charcoal in my hand moving quickly once more, nervous she’ll ruin the image again, and I’ll be forced to draw from memory. I hate that. I much prefer to draw from a direct visual.
“Do you draw all the women you sleep with?”
“No. I’ve only drawn two. Her and you.”
She releases a heavy breath. “Her?”
“The woman you saw when you snooped.”
“Why her?”
I suppress my grin. “Jealous?”
She laughs, but there’s no humor to it. “Not even a little.”
“Uh-huh. I met her the night of my brother’s wedding to Bellamy.
She saw how bored I was. How disinterested I was in every woman there who were only talking to me because I’m the prince and they wanted to be the next princess.
That woman didn’t care about any of that.
Like you. But that night she gave me something, a piece of herself that was just for me and no one else.
I liked her instantly. I liked her before I knew her secret.
But after I had it as my own, she had me. ”
She swallows thickly and licks her lips. “What happened to her?”
“She ran off, and I haven’t seen her since.”
Marcella’s eyes close tight, her cheeks flushed, and she moves the phone away, having difficulty hiding her expression.
“Then I met you,” I continue.
Wordlessly, she shakes her head.
“My toxic trait is falling for women who want nothing to do with me.”
“Rowan…” She bites her lip and puts the phone down.
“Don’t do that.”
She doesn’t lift it from her pillow, and I’m trapped in darkness. “I’m not someone to fall in love with.”
“So you keep reminding me. Fine. Warning noted. Now show me your pretty tits.”
She giggles, and I smile like a stupid bastard. Her face is back, but the phone is moving, and so is her shirt. She lifts it up, shows me her pretty tits, then says, “Good night, Your Highness,” and hangs up on me.
I can’t wait till tomorrow when she gets the packages I sent her.