Page 61 of Royal Bargain

ANNIKA

Liam’s chest rises and falls under my cheek. His fingers move slow across my back, aimless, like he’s not even aware he’s doing it. I feel loose all over—sore in a good way, heavy in my limbs, like I could melt into the sheets if I tried. I don’t want to move. Not when he’s here. Not when everything’s quiet.

We don’t talk. Not at first. There’s no pressure to. Just warmth, breath, and the faint sound of the TV still playing in the background.

Then he says, “That whole thing with the shooter… it’s still bothering me.”

My stomach knots a little. I press in closer, hoping he’ll let it go.

He doesn’t.

“Sorry,” he says, catching the way I tense. “I know you don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Not tonight,” I murmur.

But he’s already thinking out loud.

“It was weird. The way it all happened. Like… too fast. The guy barely fired before security swarmed him. Cops showed up like they were parked outside, just waiting.”

I don’t say anything.

He exhales through his nose. “Didn’t even hear sirens until Burns was being loaded into the ambulance.”

That gets to me. I shift, resting my chin on his chest so I can look at him.

“You think it was planned?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Just feels kinda off.”

I chew my bottom lip. The thought’s been stuck in my head too.

“What if it wasn’t random?” I say. “What if the guy was already inside?”

He looks down at me, brows drawn. “Like an inside job?”

“Maybe.” I hesitate. “Burns made that speech right before it happened. It wasn’t even on the news yet. No one outside the room would’ve heard it.”

We’re both quiet again.

Just lying there. Thinking.

“So either someone got so angry so fast that they waited for him to leave, slipped out, found a spot across the street, and had a gun ready,” I say slowly, “or it was staged. Pre-planned.”

His mouth opens, then closes again.

I watch his face carefully. “Is Burns the kind of person who’d take a bullet if it meant making himself look like a martyr for the cause?”

Liam doesn’t answer right away.

He looks away, his jaw tight. “I don’t know,” he says at first, but it sounds more like a reflex than a real answer.

I wait.

Finally, he exhales through his nose. “He’s… he’s always been good at getting people to believe in him. At making himself look like the answer to all their problems. Even before the campaign, he just had this way of bending things to his will. Not in a big, flashy way, but subtle. Like the world was just willing to move for him.”

His eyes flick back to mine. “And that night, I saw something else in him. Like he was willing to do whatever it took to win, even if it meant changing aspects of himself.”

The words land like stones in my stomach.