Page 50 of The Princess and the P.I.

They made it to Fiona’s neighborhood in record time, and she spilled out of the car before it was at a full stop, Maurice on her heels.

Maurice saw her again—Tameka, looking Fiona up and down, her eyes dark with accusation, burning with that familiar, unyielding hate. But tonight, she wasn’t alone.

Sara stood beside her, cold and regal.

“You always think you’re the smartest man in the room,” Sara sneered, low, venomous. “But boom, you didn’t see this coming, did you?”

Tameka tilted her head. “Okay, but for real for real, who can you save? At this point I don’t even think you can save time , and certainly not her.”

Her. Fiona.

“Oh my god, we should be three. Should we be three?” Tameka asked Sara. They jumped up and down and hugged like longtime girlfriends. “Fiona makes three!”

Maurice patted his jacket for those long expensive-ass cigarettes his brother-in-law sometimes smoked. He needed highfalutin nicotine. He had had enough sessions with a therapist to recognize that this craving for vice meant he was triggered.

The tightness against his chest felt like an asthma attack.

He’d brought Fiona into this mess, thinking he could keep her safe, thinking he could outsmart everyone. But he’d been wrong—again. He saw it now, clear as ink on paper: the only thing more dangerous than his guilt was the hope she made him feel.

He would get her killed.

The church wanted him to back down. Or they wanted him snuffed out. Keeping Fiona with him was an unnecessary liability.

He had to end this. The case. The playacting. The deadly farce they’d been spinning together, pretending they could rewrite the story.

“You know what’s crazy is if you would have just left her alone…she would have been safer,” Sara said. She chugged a drink and it refilled, even as she pulled it away from her lips. She would be drunk forever.

Maurice toyed with the idea of revoking Fiona’s bail, just for the peace of mind of Fiona sitting safely in a jail cell.

He clenched his fists, nails biting into his palms until he felt something real. He was the common denominator. He would keep Fiona alive, even if it meant tearing himself apart to do it. Especially if it meant tearing himself apart.

Inside the house, Maurice couldn’t meet Fiona’s stormy face for too long; instead he rummaged through the shelves, finding an old photo album.

When he pulled it down, it slipped from his grasp, spilling open as if it had been waiting to be found.

Hundreds of pictures fluttered to the ground, a cascade of frozen memories no one had been allowed to keep.

Kwesi. In all of them.

Maurice bent down, fingers brushing over one of the glossy prints.

A young man, handsome and playful, smiled back at him—unapologetically alive, full of light.

Maurice couldn’t imagine a person with a smile like that living in a house like this.

He must have taken every ounce of sunshine out of this place when he died.

Kofi ran toward the pictures. His reaction was too dramatic, like Maurice had found old Playboy s or something.

Behind him, Fiona let out a sharp breath, almost a gasp, almost a sob, but when Maurice looked up, her face was a mask of fury.

Esi stepped forward, knelt, her hands shaking as she gathered the photos. Her fingers curled around them tight, knuckles showing through her brown skin.

“He—” Her voice caught, and she swallowed hard before trying again. “He told us to burn them.”

Fiona’s whole body was taut, vibrating. “He made us throw our memories in the fire.”

So Kofi had hoarded his own pain. While forcing those around him to forget.

Esi pressed her palm to her forehead, fingers digging in like she was trying to keep her skull from splitting.

“You went through my phone.” She shook her head, looking to her father, who seemed to shrink three inches.

“And deleted my photos, only for you to keep them?” She turned to Fiona. “ He kept them? ”

Fiona picked up a photo, eyes burning. “You told me crying for him wasn’t holy,” she whispered.

Fiona let the picture slip from her fingers, let it fall back to the pile on the floor.

Sara tsked behind him. “Ask this holy family about wrath.”

“You don’t touch those.” Kofi bent down to scoop up the pictures.

“These are an awful lot of pictures saved for a man who was happy to see his son meet the Lord,” Maurice said.

“I never said that. I never said I was happy. You take that back.” Kofi shook with unspent anger. “I just didn’t let my daughters dwell in pain.”

Kofi kept looking at Maurice; he was wary of him.

Sara elbowed him in the ribs. “What do you expect? You brought his daughter home smelling like sex and candy.”

“Someone broke into Fiona’s suite tonight.”

“You mean that pit of indecency? Maybe it was the Lord’s work.”

“Kofi, I ask again. Do you have something to confess? Breaking and entering, destruction of hotel property…running up quite a few charges with no church to bury your sins.”

“You need to leave. Do not walk into my house and tell me what I need to do next. Whoever broke into the suite was looking for you . That suite has your name on it, not Fiona’s. How can we be sure it wasn’t one of your other women?” Kofi said.

“You seem pretty convinced Fiona is safe. And pretty unalarmed about the break-in.” He didn’t tell them about Sara’s death; something told him to hold that info like an ace up his sleeve.

“I—I can’t help you with information about the break-in,” Kofi said, shaking his head like Maurice had asked him for the meaning of life, not basic facts.

“I just know God’s timing is always right.

This should show you she was always safer here than with you.

What can you protect, eh? She slept in that suite every night, and her fate could have been—” He snapped his fingers, sharp, final.

“You cannot protect her. Return her now.”

He said this like his daughter was a thing borrowed. A library book, overdue and accruing fines. A casserole dish left at a neighbor’s, the expectation being that it would be returned washed.

He thought of Fiona, of her hands in his, the way she curled into his warmth when she thought he was asleep, the way she had begun—slowly, cautiously—to believe that her life could be hers, not dictated, not controlled, not managed.

A snap of his fingers. It could be gone— she could be gone.

Maurice swooped around. Somehow, Fiona had moved out of his periphery. He scanned the room, reaching for the handle of his gun. “Where’s Fiona?”