“I can walk on my own.” My voice comes out ragged. “Get your fucking hands off me.”
“You’re under arrest,” one of the guards says.
“Know I will have every fucking one of you fired,” I say between clenched teeth, looking over my shoulder at the men behind me. “Every one of you. Your day is coming.”
They don’t let go or respond to my promises.
The corridors blur past as staff members turn their heads, pretending like I don’t exist. One woman I’ve known since childhood looks away when I catch her eye. The head butler stares at the floor as we pass. If I speak, it will not be polite words, and this is no one’s fault. Each time I close my eyes, I see Addison’s hysterical expression and can hear her gut-wrenching screams play in my mind. The way she screamed for me as they drove her away makes my jaw lock tight.
They take me through the back hallways reserved for staff and deliveries, and the message is clear. I’m being handled like a problem that needs to be contained. My shoulders burn from them holding my arms behind my back so forcefully. My wrists ache. When this is over,every guard who touched Addison or me today will answer for it with their jobs.
We stop outside my mother’s private study, and one of the guards knocks twice, waits, then moves me inside.
She’s standing behind her desk in a silk robe with her hair pinned. The morning light catches the gray at her temples, which she usually has colored, and she hasn’t slept. For one petty second, I’m glad.
“Leave us,” she says to the guards.
“We’ll be right outside, Your Majesty.”
“Thank you.”
The door clicks shut behind me, and the grandfather clock in the corner ticks.
My mother doesn’t sit. She crosses her arms over her chest, staring at me like a general surveying a battlefield. She’s planned this down to the positioning, but I refuse to play along.
I walk to the chair in front of her desk and sit, stretching my legs out and crossing my ankles like I have nowhere else to be. The posture is cocky, angry, and full of frustration. We both know it. A muscle twitches near her eye.
“What were you thinking?”
I glare at her.
“She is an American, Louis. You have no understanding of what it means to?—”
“Shut. Up.” I lean forward, my hands gripping the armrests. “Where did you send her?”
“Back to New York, where she belongs,” she says.
I cross my ankles. “Great. I’m leaving.”
She bursts into laughter. “You’re going nowhere.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“I already have.”
She picks up a document from her desk and holds it out; my stomach drops before I even take it because I already know what it is. My signature is at the bottom, dated eighteen years ago, on the succession agreement I signed.
“This means nothing to you?” Her voice is almost gentle, which is worse than her venom. “You agreed that if you failed to fulfill the terms, you would forfeit your ability to choose. You agreed to the council’s authority in matters of marriage. You agreed?—”
“Things change.” I toss the document back onto her desk. “My frontal lobe wasn’t developed when I signed that. That’s predatory, and you know it. It’s a trap you set years ago.”
She folds her hands in front of her, and she’s perfectly calm and composed. “If you leave this palace, if you go after that girl, you will lose everything, son. Your title, your inheritance, your place in this family.”
“And?”
“Your father isn’t well. This is the last thing he needs. Don’t be childish!”
Her words have me on my feet before I realize I’ve moved. My hands rest flat on her desk, my face inches from hers.
