Chapter 20 #2
“You know what? I don’t care. I won’t work for a bully.
” My head starts to throb as the adrenaline begins its inevitable crash.
“Look, I need to go grab my things before he has me escorted out. We can talk about the fallout later.” I take a deep breath, lowering my voice so it doesn’t carry.
“But before I go . . . there’s something I need to tell you. ”
I glance around at the cluster of engineers. They’re doing a terrible job of pretending to be busy. We can both hear the buzz of their gossip.
“I’ll walk you to the lift,” Theo says.
My pulse is still a frantic drumbeat in my ears as we walk side by side. He presses the call button, the chime echoing in the quiet hallway. The doors slide open, and we step into the small, mirrored box.
“What is it?” he asks. “What did you want to tell me?”
“This is not at all how I imagined this conversation going, but you deserve the truth.”
As much as I’d rather wait until tonight, there’s no telling what an angry Mr. Harris will do. I can’t leave anything to chance. I want Theo to hear the news from me. Not him.
I raise my chin and force myself to meet his gaze head-on. “I’m not who you think I am, Theo.”
Theo’s brow furrows, his confusion genuine. “What are you talking about?”
“My birth name—” My throat tightens, the words feeling like stones I have to push out. “My real name is Her Imperial Highness, Kaori, the Princess Sorahino of Japan.”
Theo blinks once. Twice. Then a short, breathless laugh escapes him. “That’s a good one. For a second, you actually had me. If you’re trying to lift my mood by pulling a page out of Leon’s book, after the craziness of the morning, it’s working.”
He stops laughing when he sees my face. The silence in the lift becomes deafening as he stares at me like I’ve just rewritten the laws of gravity. “You’re serious.”
“I am. The dinner I had last night? It was at Buckingham Palace with Princess Alice and her parents. The king and queen.”
His face goes completely blank. I can’t tell if he’s processing, retreating, or quietly unraveling. This is the moment I’ve been terrified of since the night we met. Everything is shifting. He’ll never see me as just Kaori again.
“You lied to me.” His voice isn’t loud—it’s worse. It’s quiet, controlled, and fraying at the edges. His throat constricts. “I opened myself up to you, Kaori. I told you things I’ve never told anyone.”
“I thought you were someone I could actually trust. Someone who might . . .” He exhales hard, as if the next word is a physical wound.
“Maybe even learn to love me. For me.” His chest rises sharply, his breathing turns shallow and uneven.
“How could I be so stupid? To think, for once, that I might actually get what I want?”
What? How can he think I was playing him the whole time?
“Theo,” I whisper, stepping into his space, desperate to bridge the gap. “I never lied to you. Not about the things that matter.”
He shakes his head, looking away, as if the mere sight of me stings. “You left out the most important part of who you are, Kaori. That’s a lie of omission. It’s the same thing.”
“It’s not the most important part,” I say, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to steady it. “Nothing between us has changed. I’m Kaori first. A princess second. We don’t get to choose our parents any more than a leopard can change its spots.”
He lets out a harsh half laugh, half exhale. “Everything has changed.”
“It doesn’t have to,” I plead. “The person I am when I’m with you .
. . that’s the real me. You’re the first person I’ve ever let get this close.
” My voice breaks, but I push through the lump in my throat.
“You’re the first person I’ve kissed. The first person I’ve ever wanted a future with.
And the first person . . . the first person I’ve fallen for. ”
Theo’s breath catches. His eyes lift to mine, but the lightness I’ve come to know in them is gone. In its place is the careful, guarded mask he wore the very first day we met all those weeks ago.
“Don’t,” I whisper. “Please, don’t push me away.”
His gaze drops to the floor, then flicks toward the elevator doors—anywhere but at me.
“Kaori . . . I can’t do this,” he says, his voice strained to the breaking point.
“Not right now. I don’t even know what I’m feeling.
My head isn’t on straight.” He squeezes his eyes shut, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.
“Everything I have has been poured into this project. I’m frustrated, I’m tired, and I am barely holding myself together as it is. ”
He takes a slow, shaky breath. “And right now? I feel betrayed. Confused. And yeah—I’m angry.” His jaw works as he fights for composure. “I trusted you. And the whole time, you were living an entire life I didn’t even know existed.”
He opens his eyes, and they’re flat and distant. “You make it sound as though this is something anyone could just absorb and move past. But finding out the woman I’m seeing is a princess? That’s a big deal, Kaori. It changes everything about how I see myself in this. It changes where I fit.”
His voice cracks, a raw sound that makes my chest ache.
“You’ve dropped something enormous on me, Kaori, and I’m trying to take it in.
I really am.” He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
“But I can’t sort through the wreckage of us while the rest of my life is falling apart.
” He looks away, his profile sharp and distant in the elevator’s artificial light.
“I need time. And I need space. I hope you can respect that.”
Silence fills the lift. My own heartbeat thunders in my ears, a frantic, rhythmic pulse. It feels as if a trapdoor has opened beneath my feet, leaving me tumbling through a cold, dark void.
I didn’t know what to expect. In theory, I knew he’d be hurt. I knew there was a chance he’d want to walk away from me. But knowing the physics of a crash is different from feeling the impact. My brain wasn’t prepared for the sheer reality of it actually happening.
A sharp sting burns behind my eyes. I blink hard, refusing to let the tears fall here—not like this. I manage a single, stiff nod in acknowledgment.
The doors suddenly slide open. Leon is standing there, hand on the call button. His eyes widen as he takes us in—my shattered expression and Theo, standing rigid and as pale as a ghost.
“Oh,” he says, his hand dropping. “Whoa. Right. Sorry. Uh. . .”
“We’re going down,” I say, looking away. I can’t look at Theo anymore. The rejection is too much.
Leon steps inside and presses the button for the lobby. The doors close and the lift hums to life.
Nobody says anything for several floors. “Are you okay?” he asks me carefully.
“No, but I will be,” I say my voice wobbling. I shove my company-issued tablet into Theo’s hands. “Here,” I say, my voice thick. Then I look at Leon. “I’ll grab a cab to the hotel. I’ll meet you there.”
Ding.
The doors pop open to the lobby.
“What the—?” Leon stumbles to a stop, and I nearly collide with his back.
A dense wall of people presses against the building’s glass facade.
There’s shouting voices and the blinding strobe of camera flashes everywhere.
Security guards are straining against the weight of the crowd, shoving bodies and equipment back as reporters attempt to surge through the revolving doors.
“I gave you a chance, Ms. Minami,” Mr. Harris says, cutting across the floor at a leisurely pace, flanked by four private security guards.
“What have you done?” Theo’s voice slices through the noise. He steps in front of me, his back a rigid, protective wall.
“Nothing that concerns you,” his father replies, dismissing him with a casual flick of his hand. He stops a few feet away and surveys the frantic press with a look of mild satisfaction.
“Why are you doing this?” I murmur.
“It’s a simple matter of assets and liabilities, Ms. Minami.
I’m a businessman. Taking advantage of a sudden opportunity is what I do.
Sometimes you have to burn the field to reclaim the land.
” He steps closer, breaching the small circle of safety Theo has tried to create.
His voice drops into a poisonous whisper. “I gather she’s told you who she is?”
My eyes dart to Theo. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. He just stares at his father with a look of dawning horror.
“Do you honestly think you deserve someone like her, Theodore?” He sneers, his eyes raking over me.
“She saw your weakness immediately. Girls like her always do. They’re like parasites.
They find a useful host and feed until they’ve gotten what they need.
You were a tool this whole time to get ahead.
” His smile turns sharp. “If you weren’t my son, she never would’ve spared a stunted creature like you a second glance otherwise. You’re a means to an end.”
“Don’t listen to him! None of it is true,” I whisper, reaching for Theo’s arm.
Theo goes deathly pale. I can see the tremor start in his shoulders. Every insecurity he’s ever had about being enough is being fed into a furnace right in front of him.
Mr. Harris smiles. He has Theo exactly where he wants him—broken. “Honestly, Theodore, you’ve always been a disappointment and my greatest mistake. I never wanted children. But at least now, you’re finally proving to be of use to me.”
“Theo, this monster is wrong. You are not a disappointment. You’re brilliant, you—” My voice is swallowed as the lobby finally shatters into chaos.
The reporters surge. The security line stumbles. The half-open doors give way to a wall of shouted questions and the metallic clack-clack-clack of high-speed shutters.
Theo’s composure snaps. He lunges toward his father, shouting something lost in the din, but Harris’ security team is already moving, shoving Theo back with brutal force.
“Kaori, move!” Leon’s voice cracks like a whip. He grabs my arm and throws me behind him as a sea of bodies presses in.
“Princess Kaori, why were you working here?”
“Is there a scandal within Excelsior Parks?”
“How long have you and Theodore Riverton been in a relationship?”
“Back up,” Leon shouts, shielding me with his body as best he can. “You have no right to be here.”
No one listens. The crowd tightens. Someone yanks at my bag. A microphone skims my shoulder.
“Minami-sama!” Yamada-san and Sato-san cut through the crowd, shoving bodies aside and reaching for me.
“They’re with you?” Leon yells over the roar.
“Yes. My protection team.”
“Talk about good timing.”
They close in instantly, forming a solid wall around me. Like an American football formation, the three men move as one—absorbing the impact, forcing a path forward. They hustle me outside and into a dark sedan double-parked at the curb, the rear door already open.
Leon squeezes my hand. “See you soon.”
“Take care of Theo,” I say as the door slams shut.
He doesn’t answer. The car peels into traffic before my seat belt is even clicked. My pulse is racing a million miles a minute. “Please, can you take me to the hotel?”
Yamada-san shakes his head. “No, ma’am. I’m sorry, but we have orders to take you somewhere more secure.”
“From who?”
Sato-san looks at me in the rearview mirror. “The emperor.”
I glance back at the Excelsior Parks HQ just as we turn the corner. The glass facade shrinks behind us. My heart aches with a single, sharp truth—Theo needed me and I couldn’t stay.