Shaking my head, utterly gobsmacked, and frankly feeling ransacked and betrayed, I go on to the next file, and the next, and the next. It’s more of the same. Samil trying to create crimes and pin them on the king. Samil trying to hurt the king. Samil trying to hurt Bellamy and the children. The fucking children.
He offered to pay a man fifty thousand euros if he killed all three of them at the holiday ball and made it look like an accident. That was the night he took Bellamy. That was the night he died.
My insides churn with sick turmoil, and bile climbs up the back of my throat.
Bellamy was right. He wanted them dead. All of them. Fresh sweat coats my forehead. All these years, all these lies, all the reasons I’m here...
I don’t know how to make sense of this. Samil, my brother, my protector, the reason I’m still alive and breathing. He kept me safe. He cared when no one else did. I love him. I love him so fucking much.
But I don’t know how to handle this.
Was it purely based on his jealousy? Was this simply his way of trying to get Sebastian out of the picture?
Was everything a lie?
And if it was, what does that mean for me?
25
MARCELLA
Iclick out of the files and go over to videos, anxious to see what’s in here. There are several with a multitude of dates, but the night of the royal engagement is what I’m after, and I click on that folder. I start at the top since they’re arranged by time.
It’s of Samil in the hallway, knocking one of the royal attendants unconscious and dragging him into a nearby closet. A moment later, Bellamy steps out of the bathroom and looks around, unease all over her. Then Samil is on her, brandishing a knife. There’s no sound, but I wish there were. I wish I knew what he said to her that night.
He drags her through the hall, and the cameras on the video change one by one until they reach the library up on the third floor. I don’t know if I can watch this. I’m terrified of what this will do to me. Samil wasn’t concerned about the cameras. That doesn’t surprise me. He knows how to alter them, same as I do. Hell, he’s the one who taught me.
I click on the next set of videos, and he has the queen inside the crow’s nest on the third floor of the library. It looks different from how it does now. They’re going back and forthwith each other, visibly arguing, and he presses a knife into her chin. Bellamy is crying, and I seize up, breathing heavily. He terrorized her. He slashed at her throat. Just like that. Malevolence all over his face.
A gasp flees my lungs, and my hands cover my face, emotion clogging my throat. Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ. I shake with barely contained sobs.
I knew he did that to her. But it’s one thing to know something and another to see it.
How can all the things you thought you knew about someone turn out to be wrong?
Bellamy is bleeding all over the place. She’s pregnant. Neither knew that, but I know it watching this, and I can’t…I just fucking can’t.
A moment later, Sebastian comes roaring into the room and goes straight for Samil, attacking him. The king is barehanded. He doesn’t even have a weapon, and the two go at it, yelling things at each other, saying things I can’t hear. Samil’s vicious, but the king is too. Fighting and battling to the death. Literally. In the end, the king tries to save Samil despite everything. He does his best to hold on and pull him back up, only to fail.
Samil falls out the window. I didn’t know which window it was until seeing the entire video this way. I never watched it. I couldn’t. I was told Sebastian killed Samil in supposed self-defense that the king manufactured, and that was that. But this…
The king collapses to the floor, bleeding everywhere, and I turn it off. I don’t need to see the video of Samil fighting with Nora. I don’t need to see him tampering with the helicopter. I know all about that. Samil told me every detail. In the end, what it comes down to is everything I thought I knew, everything I was told, everything I believed, is a lie.
How can one man be so good to some and so villainous to another?
Love makes us crazy.
It breathes madness in our minds. A four-letter word layered in complexities.
How am I supposed to ruin a man who’s not guilty? Samil died, and while that was one of the worst experiences of my life, maybe it was justice. He’s with Nora now. That’s how I have to think of it. Samil and Nora are finally together. Although she likely wants nothing to do with him since he killed her and their unborn child.
The truth isn’t so simple. It never is.
Rage and uncertainty war within me. A poorly constructed house of cards, and by removing one foundational piece, the whole thing is toppling down.
Conflicted, I close everything out just as a noise outside the study startles me. I shut the laptop and drop to the floor, crouching beneath the table and tucking myself behind two of the pushed-in chairs. I didn’t have time to plug the monitors back in. Shit. Shit!
Blood pounds through my ears as the door to the study opens, and the king walks in. He’s in a white T-shirt and pajama pants, grumbling under his breath in Latin as he walks past me toward the window. He’s lost in thought, which is to my benefit, but if he comes over to the table, I’m done for.
