Page 45 of A Queen and HER Bad Boy (Spies and Royals #4)
Chapter Twenty-One
O ne man had the answers!
After sitting long enough for the doctor to dig out the bullet and call him lucky that it hadn’t been worse, Achilles found himself in a sling while he’d barked out orders to Bris’s security guards to keep her under lock and key. Aggie Mnon was still on the loose. He charged from his chair.
“Where are you going?” She twisted around in her seat while the doctor inspected the purple bruise on her face.
His stomach twisted at the sight of it. Aggie was just as cruel and vicious as he’d been at the Myrdon military camp where they’d first met.
He’d never felt such a violent animalistic surge to tear someone apart the instant Aggie had dared touch Bris.
He couldn’t understand the strength of his feelings, and how he’d thrown his heart at her, only that he never wanted to take it back.
The fiery sprite she’d been as a child when they’d grown up together had sparked into a vibrant, mysterious woman, and his feelings had grown from friendship to something fuller, that was still growing, still full of endless possibilities that he wanted to explore.
Leaning over her, he kissed her, his lips gentle, brief over hers, it was nothing to what he wanted to do, but the way he wanted to express his love wasn’t meant for anyone else’s eyes…
or with this sling! It made his every move feel clumsy and restrained.
He groaned and drew back. “I’m checking on that rescue team going after Peder and Polly.”
The two were still missing and neither of them were answering their phones. Not a good sign. He could only pray that their friends hadn’t been lost in the floods… but their location wasn’t all he was hunting!
Bris’s fingers slid from his. “I contacted my father. He’s organizing rescue efforts for—for the survivors. He’s found backers willing to help.”
And those kinds of favors had more strings attached than Achilles wanted to think about, but what choice did they have?
“Father told me that he has… been on the hunt for Aggie Mnon for a while.”
And Chises Mnon hadn’t bothered to warn them. Typical. “Well, we found him,” Achilles’s voice came out harsher than he intended, but her father’s silence had put them at great risk. “Why keep this from us?”
“He wanted us to concentrate on… other things.”
What? Like their marriage? Securing the crown? Or even more likely, Chises Mnon wanted nothing to scare them away from what he considered their “duty.”
“Who broke that psycho out of prison?” he asked.
“He says he doesn’t know. Someone with padded pockets, someone who can benefit from the chaos of a Tirrojan Civil War.”
Rich and corrupt. That could be anyone. The Earl of Alexopoulos?
Anyone in the High Consortium! Or… Aggie had said something about his father being the one to blame.
That was it! Achilles was done with stumbling blindly through the darkness; finished with being a puppet; he’d get the truth, even if that meant dragging the information into the light himself. “I’ll be back soon.”
Leaving Bris after everything that happened felt like losing a part of himself.
But she was safe—her security was here; the doctor was checking her vitals.
She’d be fine! Achilles tore himself away, striding through the marble corridors.
Once again, the gold-embossed walls and red carpets gave way to rougher stone as he descended into the bowels of the palace, where ancient barbarism lurked beneath their civilized veneer.
O Skia acted like he knew what was happening, and it made a strange kind of sense; after all, the Island of Aeaea seemed to be the center of their country’s troubles—from the mysterious massacres caused by Operation C.I.R.C.E.
, to a battle for resources that impoverished their people, to their hero whispering darkly of his father still being alive. He’d have the answers!
Deeper and deeper, Achilles wound into the belly of the palace until the glitter of modern civilization was barely recognizable. O Skia had said that he’d talk for a price. Maybe Achilles wasn’t willing to let him go, but he’d work out a deal with him that he’d be insane not to accept.
Returning to the iron-barred entrance where bare bulbs cast harsh shadows over medieval stone, he faced the security chief—a heavyset man with graying temples and beefy hands. Once again, the man watched the prince with unease.
“Let me see O Skia.”
“I’m… I’m not sure where he was transferred,” the man stammered over an answer that seemed rehearsed. “Your Royal Highness, you’ll have to take it up with Phoenix.”
“You don’t know where your most dangerous prisoner is?
” Achilles’s voice turned to a hiss, knowing he sounded threatening and not caring.
Something strange was happening here. Insubordination or incompetence?
It was all unacceptable. “Get me to the Shadow in five minutes or I’ll find a new security chief. ”
The man plucked up his walkie talkie and immediately started talking furiously in their native tongue, “Irthe opos akrivos ipe oti tha erthei. Ti thelete na tou po?”
If he thought this “foreigner” wouldn’t understand, he was sadly mistaken. The guy was desperately pleading for help with a “situation.”
“Tha miliso mazi tou!” a voice crackled through the receiver. Achilles understood every word, just as much as he recognized the owner of it—Phoenix, that power-hungry usurper, who promised to take care of this little “problem.”
Would Phoenix show this foreigner his place then?
Strange, yet unsurprising, that the chancellor was already safely ensconced in the palace after leaving his sovereign to die.
After Achilles had returned, he’d learned the traitor had hardly lifted a finger to retrieve them.
The man was so assured of his job as Chises Mnon’s cockroach that he’d forgotten to fake his duties and keep his bread and butter alive!
True to his word, Phoenix appeared around the corner like a specter in his immaculate uniform. “You cannot imagine my relief at seeing you alive.” His reproachful, glittering pale eyes showed that he blamed Achilles entirely for that accident in town, likely for the storm and the flooding too!
Phoenix might have tricked him into believing that this rage stemmed from his desire to protect them, except for one itsy bitsy hiccup: “Judging by the swiftness of your departure,” Achilles said, “I’m unconvinced that you truly cared what happened to us.”
“A crisis at the palace called my attention—”
And stole precedence over his sovereign’s safety? “What happened to our security? One second they were there, the next gone… did you not expect us to survive to complain to your puppet master?”
“And this coming from the man who’d assured me that he knew what he was doing?” Phoenix didn’t attempt to hide his scorn. “Are you prepared to listen to my warnings now?”
“It seemed you were doing everything in your power to make it a fatal mistake,” Achilles snapped back. “I don’t care if you turn your back on me, but Bris is a different story. She was almost killed by Aggie Mnon.”
Phoenix’s stony silence reeked of disapproval. Taking a deep breath, he bowed curtly. “I will do everything in the future to ensure her life is never again placed in danger.”
By tying their hands so they couldn’t help their kingdom? Suspicions ran through his mind. Had their shadow government caused a mini emergency, so that they’d have the power to tighten their control in the name of “security?”
Achilles straightened. “May I remind you that you work for me, not the other way around?”
“Try using my expertise—I assure you that you’ll find it satisfactory.”
Was it true? There was only one way to find out. “Show me to the prisoner then,” Achilles said. “Where is he?”
The chancellor seemed to steel himself, and in an instant, Achilles knew why. “That would be impossible, Your Highness,” Phoenix said. “He has been tried and executed.”
“Without my knowledge or permission?” Achilles asked in a low voice. If it rose, he knew he’d be shouting.
“His death was by order of the people—it is how it is done here, Your Royal Highness.”
Another subtle dig on how these “foreigners” were ignorant of these people’s ways, and behind that, a look of grim satisfaction. Achilles knew the truth the instant he detected its presence. “You were behind the execution—this was you!”
Phoenix raised his hands in a conciliatory move that contradicted his brightened eyes. “I am merely a servant of the people.”
Not servant to his sovereign? The unspoken was unmistakable.
The High Consortium ruled him, wanted to bury the Shadow’s secrets.
Strangely a touch of sorrow wove its way though his heart.
There was no time to pursue it. Something must be done, should’ve been done to neutralize this problem long ago.
The conviction hit him with the force of this flood.
Venice had lost his claim to the throne because he’d been unwilling to accept these babysitters, and Achilles could only hope that would be the same for him and Bris. Time to be free, once and for all!
“Is that so?” Achilles was aware he sounded like a purring lion about to pounce, though he couldn’t bring himself to care. “Well, as you are not presently serving me, Sir Phoenix of Stavros, I release you from your duties. You are no longer our Chancelor.”
The man’s head lifted. The barely concealed malice and superiority moved to his sneering lips. “It is not for you to say who is Chancelor.” And perhaps that had been the problem all along. “We shall see what the royal princess, Bris Tyndarian, decides about you undermining her father’s commands.”
Achilles smirked with no humor. Now he was threatening to tattle to his wife? Had he no shame? “We’re done here.” He turned to the security chief at the desk. “Call in palace security and take this man from my sight.”
“Ah! A bloody Myrdon spy,” Phoenix hissed. “We all suspected it—and now you’re to throw a loyal servant into the middle of the flood with no thought for my security?”
Maybe he could say “Hello” to Peder and Polly and the rest of the town he’d left to their own devices down there? He settled a dangerous grin on the man, still addressing the guard. “Be sure to drop him off on high ground, so he can see his failures for himself.”
Phoenix snarled out in anger, whipping back to the security chief. “I demand to speak to Her Royal Highness.”
The hapless guard turned from one to the other, unsure of whose orders to follow.
Achilles’s temper snapped. Even their security was confused on who ruled.
“I see, Phoenix, you’d like to be sacked twice.
Go ahead!” Achilles waved his hand generously at the panicked security chief.
“Inform the princess that we have a situation .”