I'd thought I had time.Time to make her fall for me, time to prove we could be happy together, time to make the permanence of our marriage feel like a blessing instead of a curse.
But I'd run out of time the moment she discovered the truth.
And now I had the rest of my life, our lives, to live with the consequences of my cowardice.
My phone buzzed again.Another text from Roberto:Media feeding frenzy outside palace gates.Someone leaked information about the Princess leaving.Do you want PR to issue a statement?
I looked at the sabotage reports.At the pattern of incidents designed to undermine Betty's credibility.At the timing of the leaks, always perfectly calculated to cause maximum damage.
Someone was orchestrating all of this.And whoever it was had just been handed their biggest opportunity yet, the public spectacle of a royal marriage falling apart.
I typed back to Roberto:No statement yet.But I want to know who leaked this information.And I want to know tonight.
I stood and grabbed my jacket.Betty might not want to see me, might have meant every word about me not existing to her anymore.
But she was my wife, in perpetuity, whether she liked it or not, and I wasn't going to leave her vulnerable while some unknown enemy used her pain as ammunition.
I'd already failed her in every way that mattered.I wasn't going to fail her in this.
Even if she never forgave me.Even if she spent the rest of our marriage looking at me with that same combination of fury and betrayal I'd seen tonight.
I'd protect her anyway.
It was the least I could do after destroying everything else.
CHAPTER 19
Betty
The hotel room wassupposed to feel like freedom.Private space, no palace staff hovering, no Archie on the other side of a connecting door reminding me of everything I wanted to forget.
Instead, it felt like a very expensive cage with better room service.
I stood at the window looking down at the street five floors below, where at least thirty photographers had gathered in the two hours since I'd arrived.They'd somehow multiplied since the car had pulled up, like paparazzi reproduced through cellular division when they sensed scandal.
My phone buzzed for the eighteenth time.Another text from Archie that I deleted without reading.The preview had shown enough:Please let me explain, which was rich considering he'd had weeks to explain and had chosen lies instead.
