Page 33 of The Princess and the P.I.
Esi rubbed her shoulder. She had always been like this—cruel in her tenderness, brittle but protective.
Before she could respond, Maurice knocked lightly on the door. “Princess? You okay?”
The word dropped like a silk handkerchief on the floor. Gentle. Intentional. Weaponized tenderness. A warning: Are you being coerced? Are you safe in your own skin right now? Do you need an out?
No one in her family had ever asked her a question like that and meant it.
A streak of disloyalty, hot and shameful, made her want to shove Esi into the sink and sprint into Maurice’s arms like some deranged debutante.
Beg him to never leave her alone with her own problems again.
If she whispered Princess , would he kick the door off its hinges?
Would he charge in like he had at the precinct—spine straight, heart forward, burning through the whole place like a wildfire?
The possibility ached in her chest. What a ridiculous, wonderful fantasy. That someone might choose her not because she was obedient or useful. But because she was his.
Esi’s eyes darkened, though. “It’s ‘Princess’ now, Fiona, but give it time. He wants complete influence over you.”
Fiona turned the faucet on, splashing cool water over her wrists, grounding herself, losing her nerve. “I’m fine,” she called back.
“You moved from one charismatic leader to another, Fiona, and you know I’m the last person to say this because Dad always takes it too far, but you need to go back home. Maurice paid your bond and got you a hotel, and I think I walked in on you paying him back.”
“He didn’t ask to be paid back—”
“So, you’re giving it to him out of the goodness of your heart? He knows you’ve been shut in your room for nearly three decades.”
“I haven’t been shut in. I went to college for two years.”
“And failed out.”
“And Maurice isn’t the first man I liked, but you love to forget that,” Fiona snapped. The words had barely left her mouth before regret set in.
Esi’s expression fell, hard and fast, like a stone sinking in water. The ghost of Ben haunted them still.
Suddenly, Fiona was seventeen again. Still living under her father’s suffocating rule, her head full of rejection letters from schools she couldn’t afford, and her stomach twisted with dread over the old men her father kept parading in front of her like offerings.
She needed to choose one and marry into security—the way good girls did.
Be obedient. Be grateful. Be silent. But instead of fulfilling those expectations, she hid in the closet, riffling through silk blouses and jeans she would never fit into.
That’s when her sister and Ben walked in.
Esi’s voice was strained. What are we going to do?
Fiona had pushed herself farther into the closet.
Ben, usually so composed, looked frantic. I can’t lose my position here, Esi. Your father will never forgive me.
She knew just enough to know that Esi was doing something wrong. In retrospect, Fiona recognized the emotion twisting inside her then was jealousy, but at seventeen, it felt like righteous anger.
Ben had always been her father’s golden boy—brilliant, devout, practically flawless.
Fiona had loved him in the way only a teenager could: fiercely, foolishly, with all the yearning of someone who’d never been touched or wanted.
Ben was supposed to be hers. Not by any action on Ben’s part toward Fiona.
She’d seen it in her dreams, in the way her father spoke of them both, like destiny had already written them together.
But Esi was taken. She wouldn’t do this. Esi had been married off to a man who promised to pay her way through medical school, and she promised to introduce Fiona, like Hamilton and the Schuyler sisters. But one look at Esi, and Ben was in love. Esi had him without even trying.
Sitting in the closet with a sliver of light cutting across her face, she watched her married sister do to Ben what Fiona had only dreamed of doing. She watched every thrust with a sheen of sweat on her upper lip and a pounding heart.
She felt sick, angry, and powerless. The devil whispered in her ear, and for once, she listened. She couldn’t wait to run to her father and the council.
Ben was expelled and defrocked. Esi divorced and was thrown out of the church.
Esi broke down, begging Kofi in front of the entire congregation, her sobs echoing in the silent hall.
Fiona didn’t want to guess how Esi had paid the fees after the divorce.
But Esi came out the other side harder, sharper, unyielding.
Beautiful still, but in a way that cut. But she was a doctor now and freer than Fiona could ever hope.
It didn’t take long for Fiona to admit the truth to herself: she’d ruined her sister’s life out of spite. Out of envy. Ben had never seen her and never would. But she’d felt entitled to him because she was “good.” “Pure.” “Holy.”
She was none of those things.
Forgiveness was a long, winding road, and Fiona wasn’t sure Esi even wanted to walk it.
“We have to sit down and plan, Fiona. We keep family matters in the house. You running from Dad and getting messy with a washed-out, drug-addled playboy is not going to fix it.” But Fiona wasn’t sure if keeping family matters in the family had ever worked for them.
It hadn’t saved Kwesi’s life, and it wouldn’t save hers.