Page 32 of The Princess and the P.I.

“That’s my sister,” Fiona said. Maurice kissed her neck and the tops of her breasts. Holding her fast underneath him. “I have to get it.”

Fiona slid from underneath Maurice on the couch and stepped on shaky legs to pull open the front door.

Esi Addai stormed into the foyer past Fiona like she owned the place, the way she always did.

Esi never doubted her right to be wherever she was.

She was chic and long. She wore lace-front wigs worth thousands of dollars that tumbled down her back.

She had married and divorced twice, and the last time Fiona checked, she was dating a productivity influencer with half a million followers.

She came in wearing a spaghetti-strap dress and frosted lipstick like she was going to the club in the nineties.

Esi looked between them like they had just walked in on her and not the other way around.

A painfully slow beat.

Esi’s eyes bouncing off of everything.

“Fiona Akua Addai. Maurice Bennett. What on earth?!” she finally said.

Maurice didn’t even have the decency to look guilty, just casually slipped his hand over his bulging pants and walked over to pour himself a drink. He was still flushed from the kiss, but you wouldn’t know it unless you knew what to look for.

“Fiona, I thought…” She stormed over to her sister and pulled her dress over her knees. “You hung up on me and I had huge news. I thought you were in trouble.”

“So, you come hours later—” Maurice said.

“So, I came,” Esi spoke over him. “Fiona, tell this…man, who I can only assume by the state of your dress was giving you lifesaving CPR, that I am an employed physician and cannot just materialize at the drop of a hat.”

“Hmm…if I were on the moon , I would have come if my sister were in jail…but you do you,” Maurice said.

Fiona gathered her dress together at the top, still sluggish and lightheaded from that kiss, but feeling increasingly alarmed at the instant enmity between Maurice and Esi. Another marvel: Maurice seemed wholly un-activated by her sister’s natural authority.

“Fiona, you look drugged.” Esi pushed farther into the office and pointed her finger in Maurice’s face. “Did you slip my sister something?”

Maurice sipped on a tumbler of amber-colored liquid. His voice came out rough. “I was about to.”

Before Esi blew up, Fiona smoothed her sister’s arm. “Esi, I didn’t take anything. I was just a little surprised to see you. I’m glad…to see you.”

“Yes. That is the proper response. You text me for weeks for help. I tell you I found an amazing development and you hang up on me?”

“Thank you, Esi.” Fiona was surprised at the shame that burned her cheeks. Maurice’s gaze pushed into her, nudged her. Do not shrink. But he didn’t understand Fiona and Esi were a knot she couldn’t untie today.

“So, while you were tricking my sister into getting you data for a four-year-old investigation that’s already cold, I’ve managed to break the case.

” Esi rummaged through her oversized leather bag, pulling out a battered phone.

“I was watching the first Detective Ryan press conference, and I noticed something weird.”

She tapped the screen, playing a clip of the police spokesperson’s voice, cold and detached:

“The suspect has been charged in connection with Thorpe’s death.”

Another clip followed.

“The circumstances surrounding Mr.Thorpe’s death are being investigated as criminal in nature.”

Esi looked up at them. “Why are they backing away from the word ‘murder’?”

All three of them spoke at once. “They can’t prove it.”

And it felt like a real moment—a break in the case. She knew Maurice didn’t like to be too hopeful, but the office was still charged with a sudden, shared understanding.

Esi rummaged through her leather tote and found safety pins, pressing them between her lips as she gathered Fiona’s dress at the chest. Fiona thought of the way she used to fix their uniforms before school.

Esi continued, “They can’t prove it because the cause of death was…

inconclusive.” She spat out the pin. “I got my hands on the tox report.”

Fiona and Maurice exchanged a look. Esi had told her this, right? A rushed conversation on the phone, but Fiona hadn’t processed it properly. Was this the same report Sara presumably went to see the old coroner for?

Excitement. Possibility. The heavy lid of persecution slowly being lifted. This was good, right? Why did Maurice look so mad?

“So, what does it say?” Fiona encouraged. Esi was enjoying everyone hanging on her words a little too much.

After finishing the top safety pin, she looked between them both. “The tox report cannot find a cause of death. After all of this, the coroner’s final report will likely be—get this—‘drug toxicity.’?”

“Where did you get the tox report?” Maurice asked. His eyes had gone low and suspicious.

“What does it matter? This means an automatic reduction in charges if not an outright dismissal.”

“But where did you get it?” Maurice pressed.

“Like I told Fiona, I still have some friends on the inside.”

“At church?” Maurice asked.

It was the same question Fiona asked.

Esi flopped on the couch. Fiona flinched a little. That couch was almost headed to the annals of Fiona history.

“God no.” Esi smirked. “I’m a divorcée fornicator. You hadn’t heard? Wow, Fiona really doesn’t talk about me, does she? Just some old friends in the medical field, Maurice.”

“We need a copy of that.”

Esi didn’t answer. Just pulled a folded sheet from that same leather tote and held it between two fingers like it smelled bad. “You can look with your eyes.”

Maurice didn’t hesitate. He reached out and snatched it from her hand, unfolding it mid-stride. Fiona blinked. In her entire life, not even Kofi Addai had crossed Esi like that and walked away unbruised.

“Benzos. Alcohol. Cocaine. Any of these could’ve done the job.” Maurice’s voice was clinical. He didn’t know what he’d done. He’d stolen her moment, her control.

Esi followed behind him and angrily snatched the paper back. “Do you have a habit of taking what’s not given freely?”

Maurice shrugged. “Can’t relate.”

Esi’s jaw clenched. She turned to Fiona, who was still living in the paper snatch moment, and then back to Maurice.

“So that’s it, then. All of this”—she gestured in a tight circle—“whatever…detective work, your trauma bonding, it’s over.

Thorpe was high, and it finally caught up to him.

We send this to her Public Defender. Esi closed the case. ”

She said it like a verdict. But her voice cracked. It wasn’t certainty, more like hope dressed up for Sunday dinner.

“Except they haven’t dismissed the case as all, have given no indication that they will, and are actively trying to bulldoze Fiona,” Maurice said.

Fiona felt the pull of both of them. Like she was the rope in tug-of-war. “Let me get covered up.” Fiona walked toward the bathroom, trying to tamp down the panic and nausea in her gut.

She was happy to see her sister. Right?

She wanted them to heal.

But when Esi followed her into the bathroom and closed the door, Fiona felt like she’d locked herself in a confessional with a priest who knew too much.

Fiona adjusted her dress where Esi’s safety pins tugged at the fabric.

They didn’t speak for a while. There was too much and too little to say.

Finally, Esi reached forward and stilled her fidgeting hands.

“Fiona, really?” Her tone was soft, scolding. Then she switched into their father’s clipped accent—mocking, but not entirely joking. “Eh, throwing yourself away like used tissue?”

“I wasn’t throwing myself anywhere, Esi.”

“You should be home. With a lawyer. Not getting undressed for a man whose body count is a whole congregation.”

Fiona’s jaw clenched. “He paid my bail.” She didn’t know why she kept coming back to this point. That neither her father nor her sister had done it. “Where were you? I texted you for weeks before you finally answered, Esi.”

A flicker of guilt crossed her face, but she pushed through it.

“I want to reset.” Esi breathed out. “Little sister, you are beautiful.” Esi pushed Fiona’s hair back into place with something approaching sincerity.

“I feel like we didn’t tell you that enough growing up.

But you can’t do this. Fall in love with the first man to touch you. ”

Fiona swallowed the lump rising in her throat. “You don’t know him.”

Esi laughed. “I know men like him. I’ve married two of them.

” She gestured toward the closed door. “He’s charming when it suits him.

Will read you Neruda while he taps it on your tongue.

But when you stop being useful he’ll leave you.

He’ll say y’all were never official even though you met his mom and wiped his baby’s ass. ”

Fiona turned to face her sister, her chest tight. “He’s helping me.”

“For now.” Esi’s voice softened, just a fraction. “I’ve seen men like him play the long game. He’s invested because you’re useful, Fiona. He paid your bail because he needed you out here, not rotting in a cell where you can’t help him.”

Fiona’s fingers clenched the edge of the sink. “It’s not like that.”

“Maybe not yet.” Esi’s eyes gleamed with something close to pity. “But you’ve always been too eager to believe the best in people. You think someone finally sees you—really sees you—and you’ll move heaven and earth to keep them around.”

“He’s differ—” Fiona choked on her words because she knew how stupid she sounded, even to her own ears.

Fiona didn’t quite know why she was crying.

She hated how defensive she had to be, like she needed permission to feel something.

But her sister’s words felt like the truth.

Fiona had felt it, too—that hunger, that desperate need to be seen, chosen.

It was what kept her tethered to her father’s church for too long, what made her stay in rooms where she was wanted only as long as she was useful.