I begin to pace. My legs are achy from not moving… or maybe they’re strained from the sex Margot and I had on the staircase.
“You know what I think?” I ask. “I think the mole in the palace panicked and got out after Camille and you uncovered what you did.”
“It’s possible,” Louis admits.
“It’s also possible that Kurt is too busy chasing the decoys you guys set up for him, or working on some other nefarious scheme of his. Don’t forget, we need six more keys to open the impenetrable vault, but he needs to get his hands on only one to stop us.”
“How can I forget?”
Did I manage to change his mind about Leo?
I can’t be sure. What I am sure of is that they’ll all be groveling to him—the royals, the PM, Louis, Von Dietz—when it becomes clear he wasn’t the mole.
After I send Louis on his way, Oli and I move the computer and some boxes from my bedroom back to my liberated office. I sink into my swivel chair. According to the clock on the wall, I still have three hours until my visit to Giselle’s museum.
I feel drained. Not thinking about Margot is hard work.
A woman shrieks somewhere in the house. I run out the door. The scream is coming from the kitchen on the ground floor. I race downstairs, skipping steps. When I erupt into the kitchen, I find Mrs. Everly standing on a chair.
Her face is contorted with disgust as she points at a corner of the room. “It scurried under the cupboard! I’m so sorry, my lord, but the rodents, I just can’t…”
“Was it a rat or a mouse?”
“A mouse.”
Oli arrives, panting, and nods to me, “I’ll deal it with, my lord.”
I thank him and return to my office.
But it’s too late. A memory is rushing at me, unstoppable, until it swallows me up.
A woman shrieks somewhere in the house, rousing me from sleep. It’s seven in the morning. The shrieking continues, so I leap to my feet and run toward the voice. As I draw nearer, I realize the voice belongs to my sister-in-law, Donna. Her screams come from Dad’s office.
I stop at the door and turn the handle. It’s locked.
Donna keeps screaming and calling, “Help! Someone, help!”
I step away from the door and kick it hard. It swings open. By now, I’m no longer alone. Celeste and Mom are standing behind me. The three of us rush into Dad’s office.
The curtains are drawn to keep the morning light out, so it takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. When they do, my mind struggles to comprehend what I’m seeing.
Donna is lying on her back on the leather sofa, one leg folded over the back, the other hanging down. Dad is on top of her, heavy and perfectly still, with his bare butt in the air.
Dear God. What happened here? Was he raping her?!
“Stop staring and do something!” Donna yells at us, wild-eyed. “I think he had a heart attack!”
Hunkering down, I hook my hands under Dad’s left arm and shoulder and tilt him to his side to free Donna. She crawls from under him, as stark naked as he is. With a quick glance at Mom, she ducks and crawls around the floor, fumbling for her clothes.
Celeste helps me roll Dad onto his back. He isn’t breathing.
I check for a pulse. Nothing. Leaning over him, I press my hands into his sternum and push rhythmically, willing the air back into his lungs. Mom covers his groin with the biggest cushion, and then collapses in an armchair, stunned. Celeste grabs the phone on Dad’s desk and punches in the three-digit number for emergency services.
Outside, not too far away, a child cries. Matteo has been sick and very cranky for the past few days. Stephen has been the one to check on him multiple times during the night. He makes up for it by sleeping late in the morning when Donna takes over the watch.
“Go to Matteo!” I bark at Mom. “Keep him out! If you see Stephen, keep him out, too!”
Celeste and I will take turns performing the CPR until medics arrive. We don’t need Mom here. I don’t want her to be in the same room with her husband and daughter-in-law who just cuckolded her in her own house. And I sure as hell don’t want Stephen here, either.
